


For Whom The Bell Tolls

by Suzie_Shooter



Series: Midsomer Musketeers [6]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Addiction, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Aramis/Anne - secondary pairing, Earth Mysteries, M/M, Murder Mystery, Recovery, Withdrawal, d'Artagnan/Constance - secondary pairing, ley lines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-12 23:50:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14738129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzie_Shooter/pseuds/Suzie_Shooter
Summary: Athos sees both friendships and his relationship put to the test when he tries to break his addiction to tranquillisers, but his recovery is shaken when he discovers the body of a murder victim in the church belltower. Meanwhile Porthos, on top of trying to solve a murder and deal with Athos' withdrawal, is still trying to discover the truth of his parentage.(Part Six of theMidsomer Musketeersseries)





	1. Chapter 1

Athos looked around the office with a sense of regret. He’d only been working here for a month, but he’d already become fond of the slightly old-fashioned set-up, and would be sad to leave it. At the same time, he knew the conversation he was about to have was both unavoidable, and highly likely to end in his departure being permanent. 

He took a deep breath and went to stick his head round the door of the office across the landing. 

"Stephen – any chance of a word?"

Stephen Drew, senior partner, waved him inside. "Yes, of course, come in."

Athos walked in and closed the door behind him. 

"What can I do for you?" Drew asked amenably. 

Athos hesitated, lowering himself into the visitor’s chair. He’d played out this conversation a hundred times in his head over the last few days but the words were still sticking in his throat.

"I know I’ve not been working here long, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask for some time off," he started carefully.

"Booked a holiday?" Drew looked no more than politely interested and it crossed Athos’ mind to just say yes and disappear for a couple of weeks. But in truth he had no idea how long this was going to take or what the lasting effects would be, and he needed to be honest. He owed Drew that much.

"No. Medical reasons."

"Oh. I’m sorry. Nothing too serious I hope?" Drew enquired, then must have seen the look on Athos’ face because he quickly waved the question away again. "I’m sorry, it’s not really any of my business, you don’t have to give me the details if you’d rather not."

"No, I think I do," Athos sighed. "You deserve the truth from me, and also I’m not sure how long I’m going to need. I have a – dependency." He stopped, started again. "No, an addiction. Let’s call it what it is. To prescription sedatives. I’ve been trying to get off them for some time, but gradual withdrawal hasn’t worked and actually, recently things have been getting worse. So – I’m going to try cutting them out completely. It won’t be easy, and it will almost certainly render me unfit to work, at least in the short term. Hopefully not too long, but I have no idea. Assuming you want me back at all, and I will full understand if you don’t." Athos ground to a stop, aware that he was starting to ramble and dreading what Drew’s response would be.

While Athos had been talking, Drew’s expression had gone from startled to concerned, but he took a moment to consider his words before he spoke. 

"Take as long as you need. I’ve managed on my own here for several years, I can cope with a few more weeks. Or months, if need be. The important thing is that _you_ feel you’re ready to come back."

Athos almost slid out of the chair in relief. He’d worried about this for so long now he’d convinced himself Drew would simply sack him on the spot. 

"I’m sorry. I feel like I’m letting you down."

Drew shook his head. "On the contrary. It’s a brave man who faces up to his problems, and I’m pleased to see you have that kind of integrity. I’ve been entirely happy with your work thus far, and it would be a shame to lose you completely."

"Thank you. Seriously, thank you so much." Athos felt quite lightheaded. "Do let me know if there’s anything you need in the meantime," he heard himself say, having successfully bought himself the time off immediately feeling guilty about it. "I mean, I’ll only be at home, and chances are after a few days I’ll just be getting bored."

"Feel free to come in if you can manage it," said Drew, spreading his hands expansively. "Work as much or as little as you want to. There’s always something that needs doing if you need to occupy your mind, it doesn’t have to be casework."

"Thank you. I appreciate your understanding." Athos got to his feet and Drew followed suit, shaking Athos’ hand warmly.

"Thank _you_ , for being honest with me." 

\--

Porthos arrived home that evening to find Athos sitting motionless at the kitchen table, an untouched glass of wine and the plastic sedative cannister arrayed before him.

"Athos? Everything alright?" he asked carefully, faintly alarmed by the picture the tableau presented.

"I told him," Athos said. 

Porthos dropped into the seat next to him, impressed but apprehensive. Having made the decision to quit the drugs in theory, Athos had then prevaricated for over two weeks about actually putting it into practice, and Porthos had gathered one of his main problems had been working up the courage to tell his boss.

"And?" 

"He was fine with it. I can take as long as I need."

"Oh, thank God." Porthos breathed a sigh of relief, picking up Athos’ glass of wine and taking a large gulp. 

"So, no more." Athos toyed with the pill bottle, turning it between restless fingers. "No refilled prescription. No more tranquilisers." He gave Porthos a tight smile. "No more sleep, probably."

"It’ll be fine." 

"Yeah." Athos looked away, and Porthos shuffled his chair closer so he could wrap his arm around Athos’ waist. 

"It will," Porthos insisted more softly. 

"Right." Athos forced a smile. "Couple of days to flush all the crap out my system, and it’ll be like I never needed them in the first place."

Porthos gave him an exasperated look. "And really?"

Athos shrugged. "Worst case – insomnia, panic attacks, paranoia, nausea, impaired concentration, restlessness, irritability, mood swings - "

"Athos - "

"- and those are just the side effects my doctor could think of off the top of his head," Athos finished. "Worst-worst case, the insomnia will become so acute that the sleep deprivation will make me start hallucinating again and I’ll end up back in the clinic I started out in."

"That’s not going to happen," Porthos said flatly.

"No, alright," Athos conceded with a sigh. "Truthfully it’s probably going to be somewhere in the middle of all that. But it’s not going to be pretty. I apologise in advance for anything I may say to you over the next few days. Weeks. Whatever."

"I can take it." Porthos kissed him. 

Between them, they agreed a plan. Athos would work the rest of the week and start his leave from the following Monday, giving him time to tie up any loose ends and manage a sensible handover to Drew. His actual withdrawal would start from Friday night, so Porthos could be there for him through the first couple of days.

Porthos offered repeatedly to take leave himself, but Athos kept refusing.

"Trust me. A couple of days of putting up with me in a funk, you’ll be desperate to get back to work," was all he’d say. The best Porthos could do was compel Athos to promise that if he needed more help he’d ask for it, but both of them knew how likely that was.

\--

On Friday afternoon, having divested himself of all his active casework Athos found himself at a loose end. There were still several hours before Porthos was due back from work, so rather than going home Athos wandered up to the church. There was no sign of the vicar, but Athos still had a key to the belltower and let himself in, climbing the steep steps to the very top.

He came up here quite a lot now when he wanted to think, or just to get away from things. It was like being in your own little world, with a breathtaking view over the village and surrounding countryside. Other people rarely came up here and when Aramis wasn’t on site he always made sure the tower was locked, so Athos was practically assured of solitude. Just him and the dragon, he thought, looking up at the weathervane gleaming in the afternoon sunshine. 

Occasionally the bellringers would come and go, but they never came all the way to the roof, and Athos had become familiar enough with their practice timetable that he could avoid them.

Now, Athos leaned back against the triangular slope of the pitched roof in the centre of the tower, enjoying the latent warmth of the tiles beneath him. It was funny, he mused. He’d never thought of himself as a religious man, but the church seemed to call to him. He’d found he liked sitting in the quiet of the nave too, although never for services, and never if anyone else was about. Aramis, sometimes, would come over and talk to him, but mostly left him in peace.

Athos wondered what was it about this simple country church that appealed so much. Aramis would no doubt say it was God. Ninon would probably insist he was tuning in to something older, on what could originally have been a pagan site. Sylvie would probably say it was just the peace and quiet he liked, and that he’d get the same effect in an empty bus terminus.

Maybe ultimately they were all right. Porthos, he knew, would say that it didn’t matter _why_ it helped, only that it did. But then, Athos had always been prone to over-thinking. 

There was a gentle creaking above him, and Athos craned his head to see the golden dragon slowly turning its face to the north. There had been a pleasant lull in the weather recently but now a chilly wind was cutting through his jacket and Athos was reminded that despite the sunshine it was still only February. 

He made the climb back down to ground level and carefully locked up behind him. Heavy clouds were already gathering over the village, and from the look of them he was glad his cottage was only a couple of minutes away. 

\--

By the time Porthos got home the rain was coming down in earnest, and he scurried in from the car with a muttered string of curses. Athos brushed the raindrops from his hair with a smile and kissed him hello.

"You look happy," Porthos said, trying not to sound suspicious. 

"I’ve not taken anything since a half this morning," Athos told him levelly, guessing the direction of his thoughts. "I’ve just made my peace with it, that’s all. Whatever happens now, I’m ready."

Porthos hugged him, hard. "You got any left?"

"A few." Athos nodded. "I should get rid of them. No point in tempting fate."

"Even if things get bad?" Porthos checked. He had every faith in Athos but he also knew how hard withdrawal could be, whatever it was from. 

Athos shrugged. "If things go that badly tits up I can always get another prescription filled. My GP knows what I’m doing." He raised an eyebrow. "He’s got about the same level of expectation you have."

"No!" Porthos looked stricken. "I know you can do it. I’m just trained to have a contingency plan," he added with a rueful smile.

"Fine. Plan B, you drive me to a chemist," Athos said, sounding faintly amused. "Possibly while my teeth are sunk into your thigh, I don’t know."

Porthos laughed. "It’s gonna be like that is it?" He pulled Athos closer and kissed him again. "How about I give you something better to bite on?"

\--

The next morning Athos woke from a fitful sleep with a tight feeling of panic in his chest. The air felt thick and hard to breathe, the bedclothes an impossibly heavy weight pinning him down. He wasn’t sure if he’d been dreaming but the feeling of nightmare paralysis lingered, part of his brain utterly convinced that to move would be to draw the attention of things he really didn’t want to be noticed by.

It felt like he’d jerked awake with a violent spasm, but Porthos was still asleep beside him and the sound of his quiet breathing eventually helped calm him a little. Even so it was some time before Athos could summon the will to slide out of bed. To his relief, once standing, breathing came more easily and he went to use the bathroom.

It was still dark outside and he blinked in the harsh fluorescent light, squinting at himself in the mirror. Despite this weird feeling of detachment he didn't appear to have grown two heads overnight, and he splashed water on his face. 

The clock told him it was barely six am, and being Saturday Porthos would probably sleep on for a couple of hours yet if left undisturbed. Athos got quietly dressed and went downstairs. The kitchen light was too bright as well so he switched on a lamp, finding the gentle glow soothing as he tried to calm his rapid breathing. Just the simple act of getting dressed had somehow left him feeling like he'd been running a marathon.

On any other day this would have been the point he'd have taken a pill, or at least part of one, and while on one level he'd been perfectly aware of what he was doing and how ill-advised it was, it still came as a shock to realise just how ingrained it had become over such a short space of time. 

He'd spent a year or so taking them purely to be able to sleep, until a hiccup in his relationship with Porthos had triggered an abrupt spike in daytime usage. Ever since then he'd been fighting to reduce his consumption again, but going back to work full-time had been responsible for a second lapse.

"You can't have one, so there's no point in thinking about it," he said out loud. There weren't any, for that matter. With Porthos as his witness he'd flushed the remaining few pills down the toilet the previous evening.

Athos had made a mug of tea, but now couldn't face drinking it. When he pushed it away he realised it was already cold and wondered with a start how long he'd been sitting there. Lost in thought, it had only felt like moments, but the clock said half an hour.

Unsettled, Athos got to his feet and paced restlessly through the house. It had only been twenty four hours since he'd last taken anything, surely he shouldn't be experiencing anything too untoward yet. 

He couldn't fall at the first hurdle. He needed a distraction. 

By now it was getting light and he let himself out of the house, walking east up the hill towards the dawn. Although the prospect of spring was still only a distant prickle in the air, a few enterprising birds were singing and the stiff breeze was welcome against his hot face.

To his left the dark bulk of the church loomed out of the twilight, and for a moment he was seized by the urge to watch the sunrise from the top. The key though, was back in the cottage and climbing the belltower was creepy enough in daylight. 

Athos walked on. The village fell away behind him, most of the houses still in darkness. He knew logically some people must be up and about, even on a Saturday but there was no traffic noise, no noise at all other than the birds and the soft clattering of the wind in bare branches. Athos felt like he was the only person awake in the whole world. 

A footpath sign and stile offered him a way off the road and Athos accepted the invitation. Beyond, the path ran between two hedges, overgrown but not impassable. Athos made his way along, ignoring the dampness seeping into his trousers from brushing through the vegetation. 

He followed the footpath for what appeared to be the length of several fields. Every so often he would have to climb another stile, but the path itself was completely enclosed, the hedges to either side too thick and high to see through or over. 

The ground was climbing gently all the time and when the path emerged at last to wind along the perimeter of a field, Athos finally got a view of the village spread out below. Smoke was rising from a few chimneys by now, and the sun glinted off the weathervane on top of the church. As he stood there the church clock started chiming, and Athos counted. Eight o’clock.

Eight? He'd been out here for over an hour, wandering the hedgerows. Porthos would almost certainly be awake by now and wondering where the fuck he'd gone. Athos realised he hadn't brought his phone with him, and started back towards the village. 

Going at speed it was still another half an hour before Athos made it back to the cottage, and found Porthos waiting anxiously.

"Athos. Thank God." Porthos looked relieved and then embarrassed, as if he was afraid his concern might be taken as a lack of faith. 

"Sorry." Athos gave him an apologetic smile. "Went for a walk. Should've taken my phone."

"How you doing?"

Athos nodded vaguely. "Restless. Didn't sleep all that well, obviously."

"Wearing yourself out's probably a good idea."

"Yeah, I could do with a nap round about now," Athos smiled, but Porthos frowned at him.

"That'd be a mistake," he said. "You want to keep to a routine as much as possible. Sleeping during the day's the quickest way to screw your rhythms up."

"I was joking," Athos snapped, more sharply than he meant to, mostly because he hadn't been. "But thanks for the patronising tip." He stamped off upstairs to take a shower, and Porthos sighed. The next few days were going to be a minefield.

\--

When Athos finally appeared again Porthos didn’t mention his flare of temper, just offered him some breakfast. 

"No thanks." Athos sagged wearily into one of the dining chairs. "I’m not really hungry."

"You should - " Porthos bit off the well-meaning advice, remembering how well the last lot had gone down. "Well, if you’re sure."

"I feel a bit sick, to be honest," Athos admitted. 

"Probably not used to the exercise," Porthos said with a straight face. Athos looked up indignantly, then cracked a smile when he realised Porthos was taking the piss.

"I’m not that bad," he protested. "I used to go to the gym in London. The firm had its own."

"There’s probably one in Crossley if you fancied it?" Porthos offered. "Might not be a bad idea. Get the endorphins going." As soon as the words were out he winced in case Athos felt he was trying to manage him again, but Athos seemed to be seriously considering it.

"No offence, but I can just imagine what level of facilities Crossley can offer." Athos shook his head. "Besides, unless you’re going to ferry me about I can’t get there. I might just try and start walking more," he said. "I quite enjoyed it this morning. It was soothing. There must be loads of footpaths round here that I’ve not explored."

"You could start jogging," Porthos suggested, only half serious.

Athos snorted. "I think I might actually rather die."

\--

"Did you fancy going out somewhere?" Porthos offered later, having watched Athos fidgeting round the house all morning, clearly unable to settle to anything. "We could walk down to the pub or something?"

Athos considered. "Could we go to Mayfield?"

"Yeah, if you want." Porthos looked at him enquiringly. "Why?"

"We’ve never been to the pub there, have we? I just fancied trying it." It was called the George and Dragon, and Athos was curious to see what it was like. "Do you mind? You won’t be able to drink."

"I can have a half." Porthos shrugged. "If we can get lunch there then I don’t mind." He smiled. "We can do whatever you want." 

\--

The early promise of the clear dawn hadn’t come to much, and as Porthos drove them towards Mayfield St Margaret the first threatening spots of rain began to fall.

"Guess the beer garden’s out," Porthos said, as he pulled into the pub car park. Athos didn’t answer, and he glanced sideways to find Athos looking pale and tense. "You okay?"

"Yeah." He clearly wasn’t, and Porthos hesitated. 

"We can go home again if you want?"

Athos gave a tight shake of the head. "We’re here now. I’m fine." He climbed out of the car and Porthos followed more slowly, feeling helpless. The trouble with Athos was that he’d force himself on until he reached breaking point, whilst keeping everything so fiercely bottled up inside that Porthos couldn’t tell if he was just feeling mildly anxious, or on the brink of passing out. 

They entered the pub, Porthos having to duck beneath the low lintel and then nearly braining himself on a beam as soon as he straightened up inside. 

The pub was about half-full, with lunchtime drinkers grouped around the bar, and several families having come in for something to eat. Porthos ordered a plateful of cottage pie and veg, with a half of the local bitter. Athos stared indecisively at the menu for an age, then just ordered a portion of chips and a glass of wine.

Porthos opened his mouth to ask if Athos was sure about drinking on what was currently an empty stomach, then held his tongue. It was frustrating constantly second-guessing himself, but if it saved an argument each time, then he’d swallow his words. 

When the food arrived it looked good and Porthos tackled it with a will, but he couldn’t help noticing Athos was only picking at his chips. 

"They no good?" Porthos asked, having been manfully holding up both sides of the conversation since they’d got here. "You want something else?"

"No. It’s fine." Athos ate a chip to show willing, although he didn’t look like he was enjoying it. Porthos remembered he’d said he felt sick, and wondered if that was the problem. But it had been Athos who’d wanted to come here.

"What do you think of the place then?" he asked, changing the subject. 

Athos looked relieved Porthos had stopped badgering him to eat, and looked around. 

"It’s old, isn’t it? Older than the New Inn, I think." The New Inn was their local in Owlbrook, a composite of various buildings of different ages as if an ambitious landlord had kept acquiring all the properties in a row. Possibly under cover of darkness.

"You can tell it’s properly ancient by the lack of headroom," Porthos agreed ruefully. "I reckon all the tall people died young from concussion before they could breed." He’d been hoping to at least raise a smile from Athos, but he didn’t seem to be listening. 

"I’m sorry." Athos abruptly pushed his plate away and stood up. "I need some air."

"Athos, wait." Porthos reached out to him. Athos avoided his grasp, but did at least pause to listen.

"I’ll drive you home if you need to go? It’s not a problem?"

Athos shook his head. "You finish your lunch. I just need some air, that’s all. I’ll be outside." Before Porthos could argue, he’d gone.

Porthos sighed, looking down at the remains of his food and back up at the door. Part of him wanted to go after Athos, but the other part knew it would almost certainly be inviting an argument. He compromised, bolting the rest of his meal as fast as possible with a handful of Athos’ abandoned chips for good measure, before heading outside to look for him.

The rain had lessened to a persistent drizzle, but the tables outside were still deserted and Athos wasn’t in the car. Porthos looked around, confused, then caught sight of movement in the churchyard at the end of the road. 

He found Athos mooching between the ancient yew trees, hands in his pockets and hair spangled with raindrops. 

"Alright?" To his relief Athos looked calmer when he turned towards him, and almost managed a smile.

"Yeah," Athos said softly. "I just needed to be outside. You didn’t have to rush."

"Who’s rushing?" Porthos gave him a complacent grin. "I can inhale food like nobody’s business." He looked around at the church and the mossy graves, and back at Athos. "I’m going to start thinking you’ve got religion."

Athos shook his head. "It’s just peaceful. Don’t you think? Nobody here. No-one but the rooks."

"Is that lawyer-speak for piss off and leave me alone?" Porthos enquired cautiously, but Athos shook his head again.

"No. You’re alright." 

Porthos quietly drew him closer and wrapped his arms around him. Athos leaned in to his embrace, and for a while they just stood there in the misty rain, listing to the distant cawing from the surrounding trees.

Eventually Athos agreed he was ready to go, and Porthos drove them home again. He took the scenic route back, winding through several of the nearby villages in an attempt to make it at least feel like a bit of an outing, but Athos remained silent and fidgety in the passenger seat. 

The reason for this became apparent as soon as the car came to a stop outside the cottage; Athos flung the door open and hurtled into the house. Bemused at his sudden turn of speed, Porthos followed him inside to discover that Athos had made a dash for the downstairs cloakroom, and was presently throwing his guts up.

Porthos winced. He left Athos his privacy, but was waiting outside when he emerged, looking tired and drawn. Porthos tried to envelop Athos in a comforting blanket, but he shrugged him off irritably. 

"I'm not an invalid," Athos grumbled.

"Will you just let me be nice to you for once?" Porthos pleaded with an exasperated laugh. 

Athos finally gave in and let Porthos lead him to the sofa, where he was first wrapped snugly in the blanket and then in Porthos’ arms. Resigned to his fate, Athos gradually let himself relax against Porthos and grudgingly enjoy it. 

"Talk to me Ath," Porthos murmured after a while. "I want to help you, but I can't if I don't know how you're feeling. You don't have to balls this out alone."

"My heart feels like it's racing all the time," Athos admitted. "Like something's going to happen, I just don't know what. I'm all jumpy and restless, and I can't concentrate on anything for long enough to distract myself from the constant feeling of impending doom." 

"Nothing’s going to happen," Porthos murmured. "You’re safe, and I’ll take care of you."

"I _know_ it’s all in my head," Athos retorted, more sharply that he’d meant to. "That doesn’t help."

"It’s not in your head, it’s in your blood," Porthos pointed out. "It’s physical. Chemical, biological." Knowing that Athos’ greatest fear was not being able to trust his own mind, his own senses. "It’ll pass."

"Maybe I’d be better off just managing them," Athos sighed. "I was fine when I was only taking them at night to sleep. If I could get back to that – maybe I’m deluding myself by thinking there’ll ever be a time when I don’t need them."

Porthos hugged him close. "Athos it’s up to you, but I was there, remember? I know what you were like in the mornings when you’d been taking them. Even you admitted you weren’t safe to drive in that state."

"If I only took one - "

"Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t think there’s ever going to be any such thing as ‘just one’, with you. Some people maybe. But not you. Not now. Not any more." 

Athos let his head sag against Porthos’ shoulder, and fell quiet. He knew Porthos was right, and he knew he wasn’t saying it to be unkind, but it was still hard to hear.

They stayed snuggled on the couch for most of the afternoon. Porthos put a film on, but Athos wasn’t really paying attention to it and dozed off before the end.

Porthos wondered whether to wake him up again. If Athos slept too long now he’d have even less chance of sleeping that night, but on the other hand he needed to sleep at some point. In the end Porthos compromised, letting Athos snooze on for the rest of the film and then while he made himself some supper. 

Guessing Athos wouldn’t want a full meal, he ate by himself in the kitchen, then carried a tray with some plain bread and butter and a glass of milk out to Athos, waking him gently. 

"You need to eat something. It's been nearly twenty four hours since you had a proper meal."

"I tried to eat, it just made me sick," Athos complained, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

"Oh yeah, like that was down to the three chips you ate, and not the large glass of wine on an empty stomach," Porthos retorted, then softened his tone. "Please Athos, try and eat at least a bit? For me?"

Athos glared at him, then sighed and picked up a slice of bread and butter. It was good bread, and despite himself he ate most of it. He left a pile of crusts though, and Porthos shook his head at him.

"You should eat your crusts. Make your hair curly."

"Guess you must have eaten all your crusts as a child," Athos said, reaching up to pull a curl out to its full length. 

"How likely are you to throw up on me if I suggest that's racist?" Porthos asked, smiling down at him.

"It's certainly possible," Athos agreed, and Porthos laughed.

"I won't then."

"Is it really?" Athos asked after a second's reflection.

"Not if _I_ say it."

"Oh. One of those." Athos rested his head on Porthos' shoulder again. "Sorry."

"Don't be daft." Porthos hugged him closer and planted a kiss on the top of his head. "I’m only teasing you."

"Nothing in the post yet?" Athos asked, as if Porthos might not have told him if there had been. Porthos had sent away for a copy of his birth certificate, on the off-chance his real father might be named on it.

"Not yet. It said two weeks but I guess it might take a while longer, you know what bureaucracy’s like," Porthos sighed. He could have paid a premium and got next day delivery, but he hadn’t told Athos that. He wanted to know who his father was, but at the same time the thought of finding out scared him. He already knew it wasn’t the man he’d spent his whole life believing it to be. A couple of weeks to have the certificate posted out gave him breathing space to get his head round it. 

"It’s funny," he said now, as something occurred to him. "Well, not funny, but – if my parents hadn’t died, I’d probably never have met you."

"How’d you work that out?" Athos asked, confused.

"Lived here for a bit, didn’t I? Growing up, like. S’why I came back, I liked the area."

"I’d forgotten that." Athos sat up. Vague memories of a conversation in a churchyard came back to him, and he realised with a shiver just how much the tranquillisers were affecting his memory. A few years previously he had no doubt he’d have been able to recall the exchange almost word for word.

"Whereabouts did you live?" he asked curiously. 

"Oakapple Close."

"Sounds chintzy."

Porthos laughed. "Yeah, was a bit. Modern bungalow. Well, I say modern, seventies build. Bit newer than this place though."

"Show me?"

"You want to go for a walk at this time of night?"

"No you pillock, I want you to get your phone out and fire up Google maps."

"Oh, right. Yeah." Porthos did as he was told, and held it out to Athos. "There."

Athos peered at the map, getting his bearings. "Not far from Ethel."

"Who? Oh, Wilfred's sister."

"Yes. Maybe you even knew them? If they were there then, obviously." Athos tried to work out when Ethel and Violet might have moved there if it had been after Wilfred died, then realised he didn't know when Porthos had been there anyway.

"When did you live there?"

"I came here when I was six. Was here for about five years."

"You came just after...?" Athos tailed off awkwardly, but Porthos nodded matter-of-factly.

"Yeah. After they died I spent about a year moving between children’s homes, then got sent here. Bit of a culture shock, even at six. Suddenly all these fields and shit, when I'd never seen anything bigger and greener than a park."

Athos counted in his head. "You left again when you were eleven?" 

Porthos nodded. "Mrs Price was getting on, even then. I'd only been meant to stay with her a few months while they tried to line me up with adoptive parents, but nohing ever transpired. I mean, we got on okay, but when it was time for me to go to secondary school there were more issues. I'd've had to get all the way to Crossley and back every day, and she didn't drive. There was a school bus, but it went round all the villages. I'd've been spending about two hours a day on it." 

"So they moved you on? That must have been hard, at that age." 

Porthos nodded, his eyes far away as he remembered. "Fair play to her, Mrs Price involved me in what was happening all the way. She never talked down to me. I understood she felt she couldn't cope with a teenage boy at her age, and how it'd be better for me to be closer to a school and stuff." He felt Athos slip a hand into his, and squeezed it gratefully.

"Where did you go? Into Crossley?"

"Nah. Guildford."

"Bloody hell." It was a good fifty miles away. "You went to a new foster family? What were they like?" Athos asked, fairly sure that Porthos had never mentioned them.

"Alright I suppose." Porthos shrugged. "They meant well. But they were mainly short-term fosterers. There were always other kids coming and going. There was never any peace, or privacy. A lot of them were problem children." He snorted disgustedly. "What a horrible phrase that is. Kids without parents, no fixed home, traumatic histories some of 'em, and then they're labelled as problems. And after a while you start to wonder - am _I_ a problem? Is that why I'm here?" 

"No, you weren't," Athos protested indignantly, his heart going out to him, but Porthos just gave him a sad smile. 

"Never adopted, was I?" He sighed. "It weren't so bad I guess. I wanted to get out though. Even considered joining the army at sixteen. Settled on the police, but they wanted A-levels, so I stuck it out another couple of years."

"And now look where you are. Youngest DI in the south east."

"That comes with its own baggage an’ all," Porthos said gloomily. Especially when you're black. The older ones don't trust you and your peers resent you."

"Somebody must have trusted you," Athos pointed out. "Or you'd never have got the promotion in the first place."

Porthos mustered a smile. "Yeah, you're right. I'm just being miserable. Sorry."

"No, I’m sorry," Athos said. "I shouldn't have been prying."

"It's not prying. You're allowed to ask. I just haven't got much to say about it. But I liked living here." He smiled. "I still do."

Athos leaned up and kissed him. "I love you," he said. "And I know I'm a bit scratchy at the moment, but if anything makes me believe I can get through this, it’s you."

Porthos returned the kiss softly. "You can do it. I know you can. Just hang in there, okay?"

\--


	2. Chapter 2

That night Athos lay awake for hours. Physically worn out and too headachey to sit up and read, his body wanted rest but his brain wouldn't switch off. He tossed and turned, remembering every stupid thing he'd ever done, every reason he deserved exactly what was happening to him and all the darkest and lowest moments of his life. 

The thought that he could make all this go away by taking one simple pill was as agonising as the knowledge that he didn't have any. The only escape from this would be into sleep, which was the one thing he couldn't do.

At some point he slipped into a restless doze, but when he became aware of the sky beginning to lighten outside it felt like he'd lain awake all night. 

The idea of watching the sunrise occurred to him again and he dressed quickly, collecting a torch and the key to the belltower. This time he left a note for Porthos on the kitchen table - _Gone for a walk_ \- and slipped out of the house.

The churchyard was misty in the grey pre-dawn, but it didn't feel threatening. Athos let himself in at the bottom of the tower and switched on the lights, heading straight for the stairs. 

It was always quiet inside the thick stone walls, but at this unearthly time of the morning there seemed to be an extra heaviness to the silence pressing in on him. The bells, sitting at rest clappers upwards seemed to gape at him as he hurried past. They had a strangely magnetic quality that always made him uneasy, and he'd never been sure why.

Opening the door at the top, Athos stepped out onto the roof of the tower. It was chilly but no longer raining, and the sky toward the east was clear.

The dark fields and darker hedges were just starting to come into focus as the still-unseen sun edged closer to the horizon. Athos gazed out over the countryside, picking out the footpath he'd walked the day before, tracing the line of it further on from the point he’d turned back. Following it in the other direction, he realised the path continued on the other side of the road where he’d joined it, heading towards Butcher's Hollow. 

Straining to focus in the low light was making him a little muzzy and he blinked to clear his vision, belatedly thinking he probably should have had more to eat in a day and two nights than a plate of bread and butter and a handful of chips.

The sun was coming up now, a thin slice of white gold breaking free of the far hills into a pink sky. Dazzled, Athos looked down. The patchwork of fields and lanes seemed to wheel about him and he grasped the parapet for balance, closing his eyes, the after-image of a sunburst still imprinted on the darkness. 

Despite the morning chill the stone wall was warm and reassuringly solid under his fingers and he cautiously looked up again.

At first the footpaths and hedgerows seemed rimmed with gold, then Athos saw with a shiver of revelation that it wasn't all of them, but a network of lines that scribbled out across the countryside as he watched. It was like a root system, spilling out from a darker gold line that seemed to burst not from the rising sun in the east but from the base of the very tower he was standing on. 

The rational part of his mind noted it seemed to be heading towards Mayfield St Margaret, following the line of the old hollow way. In a daze, Athos walked clockwise round the top of the tower, watching more of the lines unfurling across the land. To the north west, the same line of light now lead in the rough direction of Crossley. 

The sun was entirely above the horizon by now, and the lines were finally fading from his vision. Athos slumped back against the roof, trying to make sense of what he'd seen. A combination of withdrawal, hunger and lack of sleep would probably account for such visual disturbances, but he couldn't help looking for a more mystical explanation. He could still remember how the old paths had shone, the light seeming to come from within the earth itself.

He slid down the angle of the roof until he was sitting in the shelter of the parapet, closed his eyes in the warm rays of the morning sun, and slept.

\--

Voices below woke him an hour later, and for a moment Athos wondered where he was, bemused to find himself at the top of the church tower. For one second of utter panic he wondered if he’d been sleepwalking, then remembered his pre-dawn climb and the feeling of visionary revelation as the land had seemed to glow beneath him.

He scrambled to his feet, embarrassed at the thought of being found sleeping up here, but the voices had been floating up from the graveyard and he was still alone.

Athos returned home in a thoughtful mood, although he didn’t relate his experience to Porthos, feeling it would come across sounding too much like a hallucination. Maybe that was all it had been, Athos thought, but it stayed with him and he spent the afternoon alone, exploring several of the paths that had been revealed to him. 

They seemed particularly marked by the older oaks, some of their branches twisting in an unnatural corkscrew fashion that he didn’t remember noticing in trees before. But then, how much notice had he ever taken before? His had been an urban world, one of courtrooms and wine bars, concrete and chrome. He wondered if Porthos had felt that same sense of revelation coming here as a child, realising how vigorously green and alive the world was. It felt to Athos almost like he could sense the plants growing around him, feel the force of approaching spring beneath the cold earth like a verdant ticking bomb. 

Abruptly, he shuddered. Revelation was often depicted in the form of a thunderbolt. Destruction before rebirth. The lightning struck tower from Ninon’s tarot set. It was uncomfortable imagery, and he wondered if he truly realised the extent of what he was letting himself in for.

\--

Lying awake again that night Athos tried not to fidget too much, but it was obvious he was keeping Porthos awake, and finally he sighed and climbed out of the bed.

"Where you going?" Porthos protested sleepily.

"Spare room," Athos said. "I’m disturbing you and it’s not fair when you have to go to work tomorrow."

Porthos sat up. "Hey, wait. It’s not fair on you either if you’re feeling chased out of your own bed. Let me go in the other room."

"No, I don’t mind. You stay there."

Porthos had already pushed back the covers and got up. "Athos, this is your house and your bed, I’ll sleep in the spare." 

"I’ve said I will," Athos snapped. "Leave it."

Porthos faltered, sitting down again heavily. "I’m just trying to help."

Athos sighed. "I know. I’m sorry. I’m just grumpy as fuck right now."

"Well, seeing as we’re both awake, how _about_ a fuck?" Porthos offered hopefully. "I know sex helps you sleep sometimes? And it might cheer you up," he added, but Athos shook his head. 

"I don’t think I’m really in the mood, to be honest."

"Fair enough." 

Athos shuffled into the back bedroom and got under the covers. It was chilly and miserable and he’d just buried his face disconsolately in the pillow when Porthos climbed in next to him.

Athos looked up, surprised and still faintly irritable. "Porthos what are you doing? I thought I was the one coming in here? It doesn’t work if we both move."

"Don’t worry, I’ll go again in a bit. I’m just settling you in," Porthos told him. "It’s horrible getting into a cold bed all alone halfway through the night. I’ve just come to warm you up."

Athos wrapped his arms around Porthos tightly, hardly able to speak. "I’m sorry," he whispered after a while, hoping that this covered a multitude of sins. Porthos just hugged him back, tucking Athos snugly against his body.

They lay like that for some time, and Athos was finally about to suggest Porthos should go back to the bigger and more comfortable bed when he realised Porthos had fallen fast asleep.

"Oh Porthos." Athos sighed, trying not to laugh as it would wake him up again. "What are you like."

\--

Athos was half-heartedly picking at some breakfast after Porthos had gone to work, when his phone rang. To his surprise it was Constance, who after the initial pleasantries seemed to be working up to something.

"Can I ask your advice?" she asked finally, sounding like she’d had to steel herself to do it.

"Depends. Will you take it?" Athos asked sceptically.

"I’ve decided I want to qualify as a solicitor," she told him in a rush. 

"But that’s great," said Athos in surprise. "You’ll be amazing." Of the five years she’d worked as a paralegal for Benet and Shaw, three of those had been for Athos himself and he had no doubts as to her capability.

"It’s pricey," she said cautiously. "Fifteen grand minimum for the Legal Practice Course. I can’t afford it on my own, I’m still paying off the bloody tuition fees and student loan from my law degree, but – Benet and Shaw have said they’re willing to fund me."

"That’s great. Isn’t it?" Athos got the impression she was still working up to a point.

"There’s a catch."

"You’d be indentured to them, presumably?" 

"For a minimum of five years after qualifying," Constance confirmed. "And the course itself’ll take two years, given that I’ll have to keep working as well just to feed myself and make rent."

"Is that so bad? They’re a good firm. It’s a good offer."

"It’s a great offer. If they’d made it a couple of months ago I’d have bitten their hand off."

"So what’s the problem?"

Constance hesitated. "D’Artagnan’s been making noises about me moving down to Crossley. We hardly ever see each other, only at weekends, and there’s such a lot of travelling involved."

"I’m assuming he’s not offered to move up to London?" Athos enquired.

"He loves it where he is, I don’t blame him for wanting to stay," Constance said evasively. "And he likes working with Porthos. I’d never ask him to leave."

"And yet that’s exactly what he’s asking you to do. Do your friends and job in London not count then?" Athos frowned. "Hang on, does he actually know about the offer?"

"No. I haven’t told him yet."

"You should. His reaction may answer all the questions you have," said Athos dryly. He liked d’Artagnan, but he’d known Constance a lot longer and would back her to the hilt. He was also feeling particularly cynical that morning and was glad Porthos had already gone to work, as he suspected he might have been tempted to pick an argument about it. Not that Porthos was in any way responsible for d’Artagnan’s choices, but the way Athos was feeling right now he could have picked an argument with a gatepost.

In an attempt to work off his increasingly irritable mood Athos pulled on his coat and set out walking. He wasn’t especially paying attention to where he was going, just letting his feet guide him where they would, and found himself walking up through the old Manor estate. 

He wondered vaguely if he was trespassing – the house and grounds had recently passed into the ownership of Anne Bourbon – but the path never came within sight of the house, and all was quiet. He enjoyed the solitude of it; the trees protected him from the stiff breeze and the birdsong provided an uplifting accompaniment. Too early yet for nesting, they certainly seemed to be getting a head start on pairing up. Did everything come down to sex in the end, he wondered, or did the same birds find each other, year on year.

Emerging from the trees at the top of the ridge he looked down over the village roofscape. The dragon on the church tower glinted gold, drawing his eye. Crossley lay behind, too far to the north west to see from here, but he could hear the distant hum of traffic from the main road. 

Without consciously intending to he realised he’d once more followed one of the bright paths he’d seen from the tower. He hadn’t even known there _was_ a footpath here, but he’d found it without trying. It felt somehow significant, he just wasn’t sure how. Was he simply finding patterns in random events, desperate to see meaning in a life that sometimes felt it was out of control?

While he failed to reach any conclusions, Athos did find that the exercise had finally given him an appetite, and he walked back down into the village with the intention of buying something in the shop. He ran into Sylvie outside, who looked him up and down and grinned at his casual attire.

"Shouldn’t you be at work?"

"Ah, now, therein lies a tale." Athos looked at his watch consideringly. "Lunch?"

"Depends. You buying?" 

"I am." Athos nodded soberly. "I need to buy back a set of keys."

They went into the New Inn and found a table, talking of inconsequential things until after they’d eaten. Athos had managed a fair amount, but eventually pushed his plate away and sighed. "So, I promised you an explanation."

"You did." Sylvie had kept her part of the bargain, which had been to take away his car keys without asking questions, on the understanding that the only way he could get them back would be to explain what had happened.

"How much do you know, about my medical history?" he asked. They’d become quite good friends over the last year or so, but he’d always shied away from revealing too much about what he still couldn’t help seeing as a shamefully weak episode in his life. Also his memory was patchy over the periods of heaviest dosage, to the extent he couldn’t recall with any certainly what he’d already told her.

"I know you were an in-patient somewhere, before you came here. A clinic?"

Athos nodded, shredding a beermat between his fingers. "I had a nervous breakdown. Combination of overwork and grief."

"You lost someone?"

"Several someones, actually. My parents had died, not long apart. I mean, it wasn’t that unexpected, my father had been ill for some time, and they were both getting on, but – nobody thought they’d go within a month of each other. And then, my brother died."

"I’m sorry."

Athos looked uncomfortable. "It was a burglary. Someone broke into his house. Thomas was at home at the time, and - " Athos winced. "Turned out the stupid bastard had a gun. I’ve no idea where he got it from, and as it turned out he had no idea how to use it. He threatened the burglar with it, who rushed him. There was a struggle, and – it went off. Thomas died in hospital the next day."

"What happened to the burglar?" 

"He got off," said Athos, keeping his tone studiedly neutral. "It had been Thomas’ gun, and what happened was arguably an accident, or at least self-defence."

"Were you prosecuting?"

Athos shook his head. "No. They wouldn’t let me near it. I can’t help wondering if I had, if I’d’ve got a better result for him."

"You can’t change the past."

"I don’t think I was quite in my right mind after that, but I kept working. And then my fiancée was killed, in a car crash." He gave a bitter smile. "Not one of my better years."

"Woah, you were engaged?" Sylvie asked, then frowned. "To a man?"

"No. A woman." Sylvie was giving him an appraising look, and he frowned. "What? Problem?"

"No. No, just – new information. Sorry, go on."

"It was that tipped me over the edge really. I should have stopped, taken a step back from everything, but the only thing I knew was how to keep working. Eventually I started hallucinating. Hearing things. And – and seeing them. So, next stop, residential care."

He sipped his drink, choosing his next words. "When I came out, I had trouble sleeping without the sedatives they’d had me on. My doctor gave me a repeat prescription."

"As opposed to getting you off them as soon as possible," Sylvie said, sounding sickened. "And probably being paid by the drug companies for it."

"Not everything’s a conspiracy," Athos said with a smile. "Either way, I needed them. Was dependent on them. I still am. I’ve tried to wean myself off them a couple of times, but events have always conspired to - " he broke off, re-evaluating what he was saying. "No. Shit happens. It was my decision to keep taking them. I can’t blame anyone else." 

He bit his lip. "The other week, when I gave you my keys? I’d gone to Crossley for a meeting. Got there in a complete state and took a tranquilliser before I’d realised what I was doing." 

As he was talking, Sylvie’s expression had gone from one of sympathy to angry shock.

"Wait a minute, back up, you’d actually been driving under the influence of those things when I saw you?"

"Well – yes, I – didn’t really have a choice," Athos admitted. "I had to get home somehow. I was careful," he added defensively, knowing full well it had been the fact he had no recollection of half the journey that had prompted him to give Sylvie his keys in the first place, horrified at himself. 

"You could have got a taxi," Sylvie said sharply. "Or got Porthos to drive you. Or I don’t know, you could even have fucking well called me. But no, you got into your car knowing full well you weren’t fit to drive?"

"Sylvie, I - " 

"You selfish twat. You could have killed someone Athos. Seriously, you tell me your fiancée died in a car crash and in the next breath tell me this is what you do?" Sylvie got to her feet. "If you’re looking for sympathy, you’re not going to get it. You’re disgusting."

She stormed out of the pub, leaving Athos staring after her with his mouth open, feeling rather like he’d just been slapped. Conscious of the stares of other people in the pub, he ducked his head, picking up his drink and hiding his face in the glass. 

Outside, Sylvie saw Porthos walking down the street towards her and marched up to him.

"Did you know he’d been driving on them?" she demanded, pulling Athos’ keys out of her bag and slapping them into Porthos’ startled hand.

"I was under the impression he’d given you his keys to stop him doing just that," said Porthos stonily, filling in the blanks in the conversation and not much liking her tone.

"You’re a policeman. Are you telling me you’re okay with what he did?"

"Nobody was hurt," Porthos said. "And if he’s going to come off the pills for good, he needs help, not criticism."

"You do know it’s possible to be too understanding?" Sylvie snapped. "Some people won’t take a really good look at themselves until they get the good hard slap they deserve."

"He needs my support, and he’ll get it. Unconditionally. If he doesn’t have yours then I suggest you stay the fuck away from him."

Porthos watched her march away across the square, and frowned. He’d intended to surprise Athos by driving over to have lunch with him, but finding the house empty had wandered into the village on the off-chance he’d run into him. He was fairly sure he’d seen Sylvie come out of the pub.

\--

Athos was staring morosely into his empty glass and trying to gather enough self-possession to either buy another drink or walk out under the curious stares of the other patrons, when another glass of wine appeared on the table in front of him.

He looked up hopefully, assuming at first that Sylvie had come back and blinking in surprise when he saw it was Porthos. 

"Porthos. Hello. Er, thanks."

Porthos nodded to him and sat down in the chair Sylvie had vacated. "No good swapping one addiction for another you know," he grunted. "But you looked like you needed it."

Athos gave him a wry smile, and silently toasted him. Porthos raised his glass of coke in return, and sought out Athos’ foot under the table with his own. "Everything alright?"

"I’ve had better mornings," Athos admitted. "But yeah. What are you doing here?"

"Came to have lunch with you." Porthos looked at the plates still on the table and gave him a resigned grin. "I probably should have told you that beforehand."

Athos looked out of the window across at the estate agents office, and sighed. "I don’t think you’ll have to worry too much in future."

"She’ll come round."

Athos turned back to him in surprise, and Porthos shrugged. "Ran into her outside."

"I’ve disappointed her," Athos admitted. "And I can’t say she’s wrong."

"You had one lapse of judgement," Porthos said calmly. "And yes, it could’ve been horrific, but it wasn’t. And you were smart enough to take steps to stop yourself doing it again. If she can’t see that, that’s her problem."

"I don’t have so many friends I can afford to lose any," Athos said, but he took Porthos’ hand gratefully. 

"If she’s a proper friend, then she’ll forgive you," Porthos said comfortingly. 

"I hope so," Athos sighed. "I hope so."

\--

Having discovered walking was as good a way as any to take his mind off all the niggles and cravings his body was constantly trying to remind him of, the following morning Athos set out as usual, heading up a footpath that he hadn't yet explored. The great whaleback ridge of the South Downs rose in the far distance, with the dark expanse of the forestry plantation spreading out to his right. He found himself trying to imagine how the land would have looked before the pines were introduced, before the old oaks were felled to build generations of navy vessels and banqueting halls. 

At first the morning was cool and pleasant, but he hadn't gone far before Athos started feeling clammy and breathless. He paused, reaching out to steady himself on the branch of a nearby tree, but it felt slimy under his hand and he snatched it away again in revolted surprise.

The overwhelming feeling of being watched crept over him, and he shuddered. He'd experienced it before and put it down to medication-induced paranoia but he couldn't help remembering - why was it always the bad things he remembered clearly, when other things were fuzzy - that Ninon had once warned him that if the spirits realised he could sense them, they would never leave him alone. Was this simply the withdrawal or something more sinister?

Athos wasn't entirely sure he believed in spirits unless he could drink them, but there was certainly something weird going on. He felt suddenly desperately claustrophobic, the hedges closing in on him, reaching out with bare twiggy branches to snatch at his hair and scratch at his hands. Brambles and thorns now barred what had previously seemed a clear path and he stumbled, feeling panicky. 

He felt rather than heard the bells at first, a discordant clanging, that in his disoriented state took him a while to realise wasn't just in his head. Someone was ringing one of the church bells, loudly and badly. The rational part of Athos’ brain noted it was a funny time of day for bell-ringing practice, while the increasingly irrational part insisted it was a death knell, or the sounding of an alarm. 

Fire, invasion, plague. All those thoughts chased through Athos' mind, and he found himself running back down the path towards the church as if being summoned. All he knew was that he needed the infernal noise to stop, it was clanging through his bones and his head until he was running to the rhythm of it, heart pounding and lungs burning with the effort. 

Reaching the church he rested for a moment against the wall, steadying himself. He wondered distantly why hordes of people weren't streaming up from the village in response to the alarm, then realised he could no longer hear the bell. How long ago had it stopped? He had no idea. Had he ever really heard it?

Calmer now and feeling rather silly, Athos walked up to the belltower, feeling in his pocket for the key. But the door opened under his hand, and he stepped inside. 

"Hello?"

The interior was dark after the bright morning sunshine, and it took a moment for him for blink the room into focus. He was alone, or so it seemed, although the stone walls seemed to be vibrating still with the silent echo of the bells.

And then he looked up.

For a second Athos wasn't sure what he was looking at. It could have been no more than a bundle of old clothes, but then he took a step back and it swam into horrible focus. The body of a man, face hideously contorted, swinging by the neck from one of the bellropes.

"Christ." Athos instinctively took another step backwards and hit the wall, making himself jump. For a second the room whirled; looking up into the hanging ropes amidst the thin shafts of sunlight filtering down from above was making him dizzy, and there was a hideous sense of deja vu about it all. He'd found a hanging corpse once before, and it had plunged him into a nightmare of self-doubt and physical danger.

On the other hand it had also been responsible for bringing Porthos into his life, and the thought calmed him slightly. Porthos. He needed to call him. Or - an ambulance? Was the man still alive?

He looked extremely dead from where Athos was standing, and he could also see no way of getting up to him to check. He pulled out his phone and dialled, all the while looking for a ladder. The door into the main body of the church was locked, and he didn't have a key to that one. He could go round the outside, always supposing the main porch door was open, but by then any lingering traces of life would have surely expired.

"Athos? You okay?" Porthos had to repeat it a couple of times before Athos registered the voice in his ear.

"Um, yeah, fine. Not fine. I mean - it's not that. I've found a body. I think. I mean, I can't reach it, I'm not sure if he's dead."

"Athos, calm down. Start at the beginning. Where are you?"

"The church. The belltower." Athos had found a long pole with a metal hook used for opening the high-level window, and had climbed the staircase with it. With his phone clamped to one ear, he was leaning out to try and snag the bellrope with the pole, and it was proving difficult to concentrate on both things at once.

"And you said you've found a body?" Porthos asked incredulously.

"There's a man hanging from the ropes. Either he's hung himself, or he's been murdered." 

Athos finally managed to get purchase on the bell rope and hauled it closer, tucking the phone between his shoulder and his ear, and reaching out to grab the man's sleeve.

"Hang on," Athos said, trying to find a pulse. His phone slipped, and in making a grab for it he lost his grip on the victim who swung back out into space, accompanied by a doleful clang from above.

"Athos what the hell is going on?" Porthos shouted in his ear, and Athos let himself sag weakly to sit on the wooden steps.

"He's dead," Athos confirmed numbly. "No rush, eh?"

"Who's dead?" Porthos demanded, getting more and more frustrated and worried about the weird picture he was getting of all this.

Athos made himself look again at the contorted face of the man who was now swinging gently to and fro between the sunbeams. "No idea. Don't recognise him." He frowned. He'd certainly never spoken to the man, but having said that he did look vaguely familiar. "He's possibly one of the bellringers. Wait a sec." Athos hauled himself back to his feet and ran back down the steps. 

There were a series of framed photographs on the wall of the chamber depicting various bell-ringing teams going back decades. The most recent one included a good likeness of the dead man, and Athos counted off the names listed below.

"Yeah, he’s almost certainly one of the local team. Give or take a bluish-tinge, anyway. Stuart Talbot."

"Athos - look, stay there," Porthos said. "We're on our way. Is Aramis with you?"

"No. No, it's just me and Stuart," Athos said faintly. "Company would be nice."

"Athos are you alright?" Porthos asked, aware that Athos' answers were getting a little strange, and worried that he was on the brink of a funny turn. A nasty little voice in the back of his head wondered if the whole thing was a hallucination, but he ignored it. He would take anything Athos told him at face value until proven otherwise.

"Not really. On the plus side, I'm having a better day than Stuart."

"Call me again if you need to, okay? We'll be there as soon as we can."

When he rang off Athos wondered what to do. He could wait outside, which would be infinitely preferable, but the last time he'd found a corpse it had disappeared as soon as he'd taken his eyes off it. The odds against that happening twice had to be fairly astronomical, but then the odds against finding two hanging victims had to be fairly high, so Athos wasn't taking any chances. 

He was aware his thought processes weren't entirely rational right now, but figured in the circumstances, nobody could really blame him.

How long would it take Porthos to get here, he wondered. Crossley to Owlbrook was generally a good fifteen-to-twenty minute journey, longer at rush hour, but if he stuck a siren on and broke all the traffic laws, he might make it in ten. 

To pass the time Athos looked at the other photographs. In one from the forties he was delighted to find the name Wilfred Palmer listed, although the man himself was half-obscured by the figure in front of him. Athos picked out a flat cap and sharp eyes, but the photograph had got damp at some point over the years, and he couldn't make out any features.

Finding Wilfred had calmed him a little, he felt less alone with the corpse now. When the door finally creaked open to admit not only Porthos and his team but also an alarmed looking Aramis, Athos was sitting on the steps, deep in thought.

"Athos?" Porthos crossed quickly to him, giving the swinging corpse the most cursory of glances. "Are you alright?"

"Been better," Athos admitted, letting Porthos draw him to his feet and lead him outside into the fresh air.

"You didn’t have to stay in there with him," Porthos pointed out.

"In case you’ve forgotten, the last time I found a dangling corpse it disappeared the minute I took my eye off it," Athos said grimly. "I had to be sure I wasn’t imagining it. And the only way to do that was to stay with him until you got here."

"You weren’t imagining it the first time, either," Porthos reminded him softly. "If wasn’t for you, I’d never have known it."

"And if it wasn’t for you, I’d never have proved it," Athos said, summoning a smile. Porthos kissed him, and they rested their foreheads together. 

Marcheaux appeared in the doorway looking disapproving, and Athos pulled back. "Think I’ll do a circuit," he murmured. "Clear my head."

As he walked off round the church, Marcheaux came over. 

"Should you be canoodling with the suspects sir?"

"What are you talking about Sergeant? Athos isn’t a suspect," Porthos snapped.

"If you say so sir."

"Why would he be?"

Marcheaux gave him a carefully blank expression. "Other than the fact he claims to have found the bloke, the vicar says he was one of the only people with a key to the belltower."

\--


	3. Chapter 3

Porthos hastily located Aramis, and took him to one side. "Why does my sergeant think Athos had a key to the tower?" he asked.

Aramis looked surprised by the question. "He has." 

"What? Why?"

"He likes to go up there. Says it helps him think. It’s peaceful, I suppose."

Porthos stared at him. "You do know he has dizzy spells? Borderline panic attacks even."

Aramis shrugged. "The wall up there’s a safe height. You couldn’t fall over accidentally."

"He’s not _well_."

"It’s withdrawal, not psychosis," Aramis retorted, losing patience with Porthos’ tone. "He’s not a danger, to himself or anyone else."

"Is that a medical opinion, _vicar_?"

"Yes. Actually. I served as a doctor in the Forces before I was ordained. And latterly, as a counsellor. If Athos says it helps him being up there, I’m not going to argue. Are you prepared to take his only refuge away from him? Because I’m not."

Aramis stalked off back into the church, and Porthos sat down on a nearby bench with a sigh. After a second, Athos appeared round the corner and came over to sit next to him. 

"I’m not going to do anything stupid you know," he murmured quietly.

Porthos looked guiltily at him. "Did you hear all that?"

Athos nodded. 

"I’m sorry. You’ve been talking to Aramis about things?"

"Yes. I’ve been sitting in the church, when it all gets too much. Too mentally noisy. Instead of turning to the pill bottle, I can sit in the silence, and it helps. I haven’t found God, but I have found some peace. And up on the tower it’s even better."

"I should have known all this. I’m sorry. I should be making more time for you."

"You can’t be there for me all the time. And you shouldn’t have to be. You’ve got your own life, your own job. The more people there are that can help me, the more likely it is I can make a success of this. You don’t have to shoulder everything yourself. And if there are others helping me, that doesn’t mean you’re failing at it, either."

More vehicles were arriving at the gate, and Porthos reluctantly hauled himself to his feet. 

"You should go home," he told Athos. "I’ll come and take a formal statement from you later. No sense in you having to stay here."

Marcheaux reappeared with a suddenness that suggested he’d been eavesdropping. "He'll need to come in and have his fingerprints taken," he said bluntly.

Porthos frowned. "For the purposes of elimination only."

"If you say so." Marcheaux walked off to greet the new arrivals.

"For the record, I didn't kill him," Athos said quietly.

"I know." Porthos sighed. "I know."

\--

Unable to settle at home, Athos walked into the village. He experienced a pang at the thought he could no longer drop in on Sylvie, and wished this whole week could somehow be started over. 

Instead he went to the Wiccan Well and found Ninon behind the desk, the shop as empty as usual. He hoped business wasn’t as slow as it seemed. It hadn’t been his fault that her other source of income had had to end, but he felt somehow responsible just by being involved.

"What’s all the excitement?" Ninon asked curiously, having seen the police convoy barrel past her window earlier.

"There’s been a murder," Athos said unsteadily. It was finally dawning on him that whoever had strung up Talbot couldn’t have been far away when he’d arrived. If only he could be sure how long it had been between the bells falling quiet, and him getting to the church. If only everything wasn’t so fuzzy.

"Bloody hell. Who?"

"Stuart Talbot?"

Ninon shook her head. "Do I know him?"

"One of the bellringers."

"Oh." Ninon considered. "Balding? Slight moustache?"

"That’s him." 

She nodded. "He used to dance with the Mayfield Morris side. Took up bellringing instead when his knees went. They used to come in here occasionally. Haven’t seen him since he took to the church though. Why would anyone want to kill him?"

"I have no idea." Athos sank into the chair beside the desk and swallowed hard against a wave of nausea. Ninon gave him a look.

"You look awful."

"I found him."

"You seem to make a habit of finding bodies. Have you considered getting a better hobby?"

Athos raised a smile. "It’s not that. I had a strange experience this morning. Other than finding a corpse, I mean. At least – it lead to that, in a way."

"Why don’t you start at the beginning," Ninon suggested practically. 

Athos told her about his experience on top of the tower, and how he’d been exploring the footpaths revealed to him in something like a vision. How what had been helping him up to that point had turned suddenly cold, and felt hostile and frightening. 

Ninon listened attentively, and then nodded. "You've been walking ley lines?"

"Ley lines? Isn't that just mystic bollocks?" Athos asked sceptically. 

Ninon raised an eyebrow. "I run a business based on 'mystic bollocks', thank you very much. But no, fair enough, there's a lot of rubbish written about them. Or should I just say for every three people interested in the phenomenon there'll be at least six opinions as to what they actually represent. The earliest theories were purely functional: trade routes running between points of high ground. More esoteric theories have them as lines of earth force, or magnetism. They can be dowsed like water, traced on the ground. They're found in all manner of cultures and folklore, under different names. The Chinese call them dragon lines, did you know that?"

"It never really came up in my previous life," Athos said, and then wondered if he should clarify that by previous life he just meant his career as a barrister.

"Have you noticed the dedication of that church you're so fond of sitting in?"

"St George." Athos felt more was required of him. "There's a dragon in one of the stained glass windows. And on the tower."

"Exactly. But that's not St George pictured in the window, it's the Archangel Michael. In some circles he’s an altogether more illustrious dragon killer. There's a St Michael's in Crossley."

"I've been there."

"I thought you might have. And to St Margaret's?"

"In Mayfield? Yes."

"St Margaret was associated with dragons too. Her legend’s less well known, obviously, being a girl in a notoriously patriarchal Church, but nevertheless. Don't you find that intriguing, three churches with a dragon connection in such close proximity?"

"You're suggesting it's connected? But they're dragon slayers, surely, not worshippers."

Ninon shrugged. "The Church gets very uncomfortable about pagan elements. Tries to suppress it, distort it. But it always comes through somehow. Do you see?"

"Are you saying we're on an alignment with Stonehenge or something?"

Ninon shook her head. "People get fixated on drawing lines on a map with a ruler. Leylines aren't dead straight, they weave with the country. Footpaths, streams, hills, ancient sites. Think of it as a river system, or a circulatory system, if you like. The main lines – the Michael and Mary, the Athena and Apollo – the sexy ones that get all the headlines – you can think of them as the arteries. But everywhere there are smaller lines of geomantic force feeding into them. Tributaries, capillaries. And you've been walking them. Instinctively. It's been helping you, you've been drawing on that force. I told you before, you have an affinity for this."

"It wasn’t helping this morning," Athos said. "It felt terrible in fact."

"A ley can be poisoned," Ninon said bleakly. "Sometimes it's something as simple as a main road being built along it, you get an accident blackspot – the energy can be corrupted. Desecrated."

"Could murder have the same effect?"

"Exactly. Spiritual pollution, if you like. And that’s the second murder at that church this year." 

"How do I fix it?"

Ninon smiled as if the answer was obvious. "Find the murderer."

\--

By lunchtime news of the murder had gone all round the village. In the estate agents, Sylvie listened with increasing worry to Gerry, who’d come across from the shop with the gossip. Ever since blowing up at Athos she’d been feeling guilty about it, and would have gone to apologise except she had no idea if he’d want to see her, and also suspected Porthos might have chased her off. Athos was having to deal with all manner of shit, and now this happened. 

As if her thoughts had conjured him up Sylvie suddenly caught sight of Athos outside, walking along apparently deep in thought. She snatched up her jacket and headed out of the door without a word, leaving Gerry staring after her in surprise.

\--

Athos was leaning on the parapet of the bridge looking down into the stream below when he sensed someone come and stand next to him. He glanced sideways and realised with considerable surprise and a distinct spark of hope, that it was Sylvie.

"Why isn’t it called the Owl?" Athos asked, when it appeared she was struggling for what to say.

Sylvie gave him a grateful look for breaking the awkward silence, mingled with amusement at his tendency towards the most random questions. "You what?"

"The stream." Athos nodded down at the water. "This is Owlbrook, right? But that’s the Lynn. Why isn’t it the Owl Brook?"

"There is an Owl Brook, actually. It’s smaller, and it runs through the woods behind the old Manor, feeds into this one further down. The Manor was originally Owlbrook Manor. It took its name from the stream, and the village took its name from the Manor."

"I see." Athos nodded. "The more you know, eh?" 

For a while they just leaned there side by side, staring down at the young Lynn on the first part of its journey to the sea, but the silence was more comfortable now.

"I’m sorry," Athos said finally. "What I did was inexcusable, and I promise you I wasn’t looking for sympathy."

"I’m sorry too," Sylvie sighed. "For calling you a twat."

Athos shrugged. "Not entirely sure I could prove you wrong on that score."

Sylvie gave a quiet laugh. "Still. You’re trying to do the right thing, and I didn’t help. It’s all too easy to criticise when you’ve never been there yourself." She looked at him awkwardly. "I gave your keys back to Porthos."

"I know."

"He said?" Sylvie winced. 

Athos nodded. "Don’t worry. I’ve asked him not to give them back to me yet."

"I don’t think I made a very good impression on him."

Athos gave a faint smile. "He’s very protective," he said, deciding that Sylvie didn’t need to know about the ten minute indignant rant Porthos had gone off on later.

"Friends?"

"Of course." Athos looked sideways at her. "Sometimes you need a friend who’s willing to tell you the hard truths as well."

Sylvie pulled herself up to sit on the parapet. "So I heard you found a body?"

Athos nodded. 

"Want to talk about it?"

He sat next to her and related his experiences, and then repeated his conversation with Ninon a little more warily, knowing Sylvie’s general opinion of Ninon’s approach to things. Sure enough, she immediately looked cross.

"And you believe that?" Sylvie demanded.

"Let’s just say I’m keeping an open mind."

"She’s filling your head with all this toss and I’m worried about the effect on you."

"You think it’s all rubbish then?"

"Oh, I think the power of suggestion can be incredibly powerful, to kill or to cure. She’s convinced you that finding out who killed that poor man will make you feel better, and who’s to say it won’t? What I’m worried about is what happens if you can’t?"

Athos slid off the wall, and she looked at him in confusion. "Now where are you off to?"

"Well, I’ve got a murderer to catch," said Athos, and gave her a lopsided smile. "I’d better get on with it."

\--

That night after dinner Porthos spread his notes over the kitchen table and started working back through what they knew so far, to check his lines of enquiry. 

Athos came over to sit next to him and Porthos looked up enquiringly, as Athos tended not to interrupt him while he was working.

"Will you let me help?" Athos asked. 

Porthos frowned. "Technically I shouldn’t," he said carefully. "You found the body."

"Meaning I’m a suspect?"

"No!" Porthos hesitated. "I mean – I know you’re not. It’s just – in terms of the investigation – "

"You need it to be by the book. I get that. But I still might be able to help. I know people in the village better than you. And let’s face it, I’ve got time on my hands." Athos kept quiet on his real reasons for wanting to get to the bottom of this one. Porthos tended to be less blunt about it in deference to Athos’ feelings, but deep down his level of paranormal scepticism was nearly on a par with Sylvie’s. 

"I need something to concentrate on," Athos said instead. "Something to distract me from how much I want to take a damn pill all the time."

Porthos huffed at him, then, having made his decision immediately became businesslike. "Alright, what do we know about him then? Stuart Talbot, married, no kids, worked as a bank teller in the Crossley branch of Lloyds. Fifty two years old, member of the St George's bellringing team for the past three and a half years. Not actually a resident of Owlbrook, lived in Mayfield St Margaret."

"Did he also ring for St Margaret’s?" Athos asked. "Strange he should come over here."

"Maybe they didn't have a vacancy. Or he might ring for both. I'll check." Porthos made a note. 

"Aramis will know,"Athos pointed out. "He covers both parishes. I can ask him if you like."

"Thanks, that'd be a help. I doubt he was killed by a rival bellringing team, but it never hurts to check."

"You mean St Margaret’s might have nobbled the opposition?" Athos half-laughed. "I hadn’t considered that. Are bellringers prone to feuding?" 

"Presumably only if someone drops a clanger," Porthos grinned. 

Athos groaned.

"Post-mortem’s being done as we speak, should have the results tomorrow," Porthos continued, consulting his notes. "Was it death by hanging, or was he dead when he was strung up? Still an outside chance that it was suicide, but it doesn’t feel like it to me. You'd find a nice sturdy branch or something wouldn't you? Or the staircase banister would have done. A bellrope's a peculiar thing to hang yourself from. And how did he get up there in the first place, there was no stool or ladder or anything. Also Talbot didn’t have a key on him, so someone else must have opened that tower door. You said it was open when you arrived?"

"Yes. And Aramis is always very careful about keeping it locked when he’s not on site, even if the main church is open. And the connecting door was definitely locked." 

"So we need to know who else had a key, even if it’s only to eliminate them. Something else you might check with Aramis, if you’re going to speak to him." He knew Marcheaux had already interviewed the vicar, but Porthos also conceded that Athos was right, people might tell him things they might not volunteer to the prickly DS Marcheaux, who made a habit out of rubbing people up the wrong way. Plus, if Athos thought being involved would be good for his recovery, he was honour-bound to offer him all the help he could.

"How are you feeling?" Porthos asked. "Must have come as a hell of a shock to you this morning."

Athos nodded slowly. "Like a sanctuary had been invaded," he admitted. "Despoiled."

"I get why you want to help catch who did it," Porthos murmured, reaching across to take Athos’ hand. "I really do. We’ll find out what happened, I promise."

\--

"Autopsy report's in," d'Artagnan declared the next morning. 

"And?" Porthos looked up eagerly.

"Definitely murder. Pathologist says he was strangled with a much thinner cord than the one we found him hanging from." 

Porthos found himself relaxing slightly. Although it was clearly an awful thing, it meant his instincts had been right.

"Okay. Order of business, we need to go and interview the widow. Keep it informal, tell her we'll be dropping round, I'd like to get a look at his house anyway. Marcheaux, you and Elodie visit the bank where he worked, see what they thought of him, was he having any problems, the usual. Between us we should get a few more leads on what his movements were, who his friends were, that sort of thing."

"It'll be the wife," said Marcheaux darkly. "It always is."

"I imagine anyone married to you would certainly be trying," Elodie retorted.

Porthos cleared his throat meaningfully and they all shut up. Sometimes, he thought, it felt more like running a play group than a team of grown up detectives.

"Anything else of interest in the report?" he asked.

"Confirms time of death as not long before Athos found him," d’Artagnan read. "Some tearing of the fingernails suggests he put up a bit of a fight, but no indication that he’d been hit at any point, so his assailant must have been strong enough to choke him without having to disable him first. Also there was some kind of animal hair on his trousers. Probably just from a pet, but they’re doing further tests to identify it."

"On the off-chance he was murdered by a badger?" Marcheaux enquired silkily. 

Before another argument could break out, Porthos hastily extracted d’Artagnan from the room and headed for Mayfield.

\--

"Mrs Vanessa Talbot? Detective Inspector du Vallon, this is Detective Sergeant D'Artagnan. We’d like to ask you a few questions if that’s alright?"

The woman who’d answered the door had a cloud of permed hair that frothed around her head in an unnatural shade of crimson that clashed violently with that of her carpet slippers. Porthos judiciously put her in her late forties, but the combination of slippers and frilly apron gave the initial appearance of a much older woman.

"Ooh, two of you. Do come in."

Porthos kept his expression one of neutral condolence, fighting the urge to exchange a surprised look with d'Artagnan. Recently bereaved spouses normally came across as terribly upset or suspiciously guilty. He didn't think one had ever welcomed him in with open arms before.

She lead them into a front room and invited them to take a seat. As Porthos looked around, his first impression was that of sitting in a small library. Every wall was crammed with mismatched bookshelves. Some of those nearer the television set held DVDs, but every title he could make out, whether book or film were murder mysteries. Mrs Talbot didn't appear to discriminate - historical, procedural, private detectives, foreign detectives, cosy English country house mysteries, hard boiled American crime - everything seemed fair game as long as it could be deemed a murder mystery. Agatha Christie had an entire bookcase to herself. 

"Quite the collection you've got here," d'Artagnan said faintly.

"Thank you Sergeant." Mrs Talbot beamed at him. "Just my little hobby. Stuart had his bell ringing, I have my books."

"About your husband, Mrs Talbot," Porthos said, fishing for some kind of reaction. Currently she was perched on the edge of her seat fixing them both with a birdlike interest, like she was waiting for them to entertain her. "I have to inform you we are proceeding on the understanding that he was murdered."

Other than a widening of the eyes and a slight intake of breath that sounded anticipatory more than anything, Mrs Talbot didn't react. 

"Do you have any idea who might have wanted to harm him?"

The fluffy hair shook vigorously. "No. He went off to work every day regular as clockwork, came home, ate his dinner, some nights went out to his bellringing group, came home again, went to bed. I'm afraid getting himself murdered is by far the most interesting thing my husband has ever managed." 

"That's – certainly one way of looking at it," said Porthos, taken aback.

"I'm sorry, you must think me terribly callous," said Mrs Talbot, not sounding sorry at all. "We lived largely separate lives I'm afraid. His departure will have little tangible effect on me, other than the fact I won't have to wash his underwear any more. Oh, and now I can get a dog, of course."

"That'll be nice," d'Artagnan managed, feeling the startled silence should be filled somehow. "Company for you."

"Your, er - your husband was against the idea was he?" Porthos ventured, for a second actually entertaining the idea she might have done him in for that reason alone. "Pets, I mean?"

"Oh, he wouldn't countenance it," she agreed readily. "I've no idea why, it would have been me cleaning up after them, after all." Mrs Talbot looked up. "Do I take it that you being here like this means I'm a suspect? How exciting." She lowered her voice conspiratorially. "Will I have to have my fingerprints taken?" 

"I'm not sure that will be necessary at this stage," said Porthos, and she looked disappointed. "But if you could tell us where you were on the morning your husband was killed, that would be of help," he added. 

Upon being asked for her alibi, Mrs Talbot visibly perked up again. "Well, I was here. All morning. Alone, unfortunately."

"No telephone calls or deliveries, nobody who might be able to confirm that?" d'Artagnan checked.

"I'm afraid not." She eyed them speculatively. "I suppose it's often the spouse, isn't it?" 

"Sadly so," Porthos agreed, adding with a smile, "I don't suppose there's any large life insurance policies you want to declare?"

Mrs Talbot gave an unnerving giggle. "But of course Inspector, you'll be wanting to take down all my particulars, won't you?" 

Porthos cleared his throat awkwardly, locking eyes with a china dog on the mantelpiece. Its mournful expression seemed to be sympathising with him.

“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm your husband?” d’Artagnan enquired, seeing his superior was rendered temporarily speechless.

“No.” Mrs Talbot shook her head thoughtfully. “He wasn’t really a man to excite murderous passion – or any sort of passion come to that. We have separate bedrooms you know,” she confided. “We found it was best.”

Porthos wondered which of them had instigated that, and made a mental note to find out if Mr Talbot had been getting up to any extra-curricular hanky-panky under the pretence of bellringing practice. He got the impression Talbot had been out most evenings, and due to the proximity of Athos’ cottage to the church Porthos was fairly sure bellringing practice only took place once a week. But then, if he rang for more than one church that might explain it.

“Are you a church-goer, Mrs Talbot?” he asked. “Are you familiar with St George’s?”

“No, not really. I think I went to a fête there once? I go to St Margaret's occasionally, Christmas, harvest festival, that sort of thing. I’m not what you’d call a regular attender. Nor was Stuart when we met.”

“He developed an interest in the Church?”

“More of an interest in the bellringing,” she explained. “You can’t really avoid the religious side, when it’s church bells you’re mucking about with. It’s expected. But I’m not sure he was ever much of a believer. He used to be a Morris dancer you know. But he had to have an operation on his knee, and after that he couldn’t manage the leaping about, so he took up campanology.” 

Porthos distinctly heard d’Artagnan stifle a snort of laughter, but personally he found there was a note of bitter disdain in her tone that took the amusement out of the image.

“You disapproved?” he ventured, thinking that it seemed a fairly blameless hobby to have adopted.

“Snobs,” she said, mouth pursing sourly. “All of them. He had to drop his old friends, they wouldn’t even mix in the pub. And they certainly didn’t like _me_ ,” she added, with a certain satisfaction. “Thought I was common, I expect. I probably am. Sod the lot of ‘em.” 

“Did your husband say why he was going to St George’s that morning?” d’Artagnan asked.

“No. I just thought he’d gone to work as usual. I can’t image why he’d have been there at that time of day.” Mrs Talbot frowned, as it the incongruity of it was only just striking her. “You’re sure it wasn’t just an accident? Those ropes have got a hell of a pull to them. Stuart showed me once, when he first started. Nearly pulled me off my feet. He didn’t just get tangled up, like?”

“I’m afraid he was strangled first,” Porthos told her, watching her reaction closely. “And then strung up afterwards. It was definitely murder.”

“Oh.” Mrs Talbot looked, if anything, rather affronted, as if it was a personal insult that someone else should have been emotionally enough involved with her husband to want to kill him. “I wonder why.”

That was what Porthos would like to know. 

\--

Halfway through the morning Athos went to find Aramis, conveniently running him to ground in the church. 

"Hello you. How's it going?" Aramis willingly came over to sit with him in a pew and talk. 

"Keeping busy," Athos nodded. "In fact I have a few questions, if you don't mind. About yesterday."

Aramis grinned. "They should pay you a retainer, that lot. How can I help?"

"Talbot was one of your bellringers, wasn't he?"

"Yes, that's right. I didn't know him all that well on a personal basis, but he seemed quite dedicated to it all. He rang for St Margaret’s as well." 

"Oh he did? That was going to be my next question. He lived over that way didn't he?" 

"Yes, but Mayfield's only got four bells and we've got six here. More prestigious. And the Sunday services are on alternate weeks, so there was rarely any conflict in the diaries."

Athos shook his head. "How ever do you manage to juggle four parishes? You must be torn every which way."

"Owlbrook and St Michael's in Crossley every other Sunday, eight AM and eleven AM one week, then switching the second. Mayfield and St Martin's in Hangate on the weeks in between, same deal," Aramis recited, with a rueful laugh. "I was born into the wrong generation to have a single parish to myself, and a huge old rectory to knock around in. Now you get half the county and a seventies semi."

"I'd have thought you'd be moving into the Manor," Athos ventured. "Now that it's officially Anne's?"

Aramis made a non-committal noise. "She's thinking of turning it into a hotel," he said, avoiding the question. "Since planning permission had already been granted for the previous owner. Not with all the chalets and stuff that he'd had in mind, just the house itself, more of a high-end boutiquey place."

"No room for a vicar in all of that?" Athos guessed sympathetically.

"I had hoped." Aramis sighed. "Confidentially? I’ve asked her to marry me."

"And?" From the look on his face Athos assumed it hadn't been an enthusiastic yes.

"She's asked for some time to think about it."

"Well that's not a no."

"It's not a yes either."

"At least if and when it is, you’ll know she’s certain. Sometimes, the greatest gift you can give someone is patience," Athos said. "God knows I'm grateful to Porthos for putting up with me."

"Yes He probably does," Aramis murmured, then smiled at Athos' confusion. "Sorry. Vicar joke. They're allowed to not be funny."

Athos snorted. "Did you know Ninon de Larroque thinks your church is on a ley line?" 

"We all find our own paths to the infinite," Aramis conceded. "Who am I to say she's wrong?"

"Have you felt the atmosphere change in here at all?" Athos asked, wondering if what he’d felt out on the footpath had been noticeable in here. "Since what happened?"

"I'm planning a blessing service," Aramis said evasively. "Be nice if you could come along."

"Certainly." Athos nodded. "Who else had keys to the tower, apart from me?"

Aramis looked apologetically guilty. “Hope I didn’t drop you in it by telling them that. Er, so me, obviously. Thankfully I was taking a christening in Hangate at the time, so I’ve got two entire families who can vouch for my whereabouts. The churchwarden has one. And Mr Ashton held one on behalf of the bellringers."

"Not Talbot himself?"

Aramis gave a thin smile. "Have you met Ashton? In a group of theoretical equals, he was very much the self-appointed leader. He felt it best if he was the nominated key holder, shall we say."

"He might regret that, if he finds himself the main suspect," Athos noted. "No-one else had a key?"

Aramis shook his head, then hesitated. "There is one other though. It's kept in the vestry. There's a key-safe with copies of all the keys, for emergencies."

"Can we have a look?"

"Sure." Aramis took him in, and Athos couldn't help noticing the door was only on the latch.

"Is this normally locked?"

"If I'm off site, yes, especially if the church itself is open. If I'm around - " Aramis gestured helplessly. "Not so much. It's a faff to have to keep unlocking it if I'm going in and out."

"So anyone who was familiar with your movements could have nipped in here and borrowed the tower key?"

"Yes, but it's not missing is it? I showed the police. It was there that morning." Aramis opened the key safe which Athos noticed was also unlocked, and took out a key.

"That looks quite new."

"It is. Technically I gave you mine and took the spare for myself. I had another one cut, so you could hang on to one."

"So presumably, anyone else with access to this place could have done the same?" Athos said slowly. 

Aramis stared at him. "Well, yes. I suppose so."

"Where did you get this one cut?" Athos asked, thinking Porthos needed to get someone to do the rounds of local key cutters, if he hadn't already. 

"Place in Crossley. Hang on." Aramis hunted through his wallet and came up with a business card. "Here. I used them because they're not far from St Michael's, but that probably makes them the closest to here as well. Worth starting with them, at least."

"Thank you. I'll tell Porthos. And do let me know when the blessing will be."

\--

Marcheaux and Elodie arrived at the bank and were quickly ushered in to see the deputy manager; the establishment clearly feeling that having two police officers hanging around in the public area created a bad impression.

"Good afternoon officers, my name's Sean Williams, I understand this is about Stuart Talbot?"

"Thank you for seeing us," said Elodie. "We won't take up much of your time, we just have a few questions."

"I'll help if I can, but I don't know what I can tell you. It's a tragedy, of course."

"Had he been acting strangely at all? Did he often miss work, or turn up late?"

"No, he'd been a model employee for his whole time with us. Of course you understand these things can't be avoided."

Elodie and Marcheaux exchanged a look. "What things?" asked Marcheaux, thinking that avoiding murder was something most people managed reasonably well on a daily basis.

"Compulsory redundancy." Williams took in their blank expressions. "Mr Talbot had been made redundant. We're moving more towards automated tellers, we don't need as many front line staff as we used to."

"Was he upset about it? Do you think he decided to top himself?" Marcheaux asked, then bristled when both Williams and Elodie glared at him indignantly for his choice of words. "What? 

"Well he obviously wasn't happy about it, but he didn't have what I would have termed an extreme reaction to the news," Williams said carefully. "Besides, if he was going to do such a thing, wouldn't he have done it right away?"

"What, like hung himself in the foyer on his way out?" Marcheaux suggested crassly. 

"No, of course not," Williams snapped. "I just meant – I can’t see how it could have any bearing on what happened to him. I mean it's been a while, hasn't it?"

"Has it?" chorused Elodie and Marcheaux, both starting to feel there was something about this conversation they were missing.

"Well, yes. Mr Talbot was made redundant before Christmas. He hasn't worked here for over three months."

\--


	4. Chapter 4

When Porthos got home that evening he found Athos fast asleep on the sofa. Having warred with his conscience for a moment, he woke him up.

"Porthos?" Athos sat up, blinking blearily. "Is something wrong?"

"No. Nothing's wrong, I just thought we agreed that sleeping during the day was going to fuck up your sleep pattern even more."

"By this point I'll settle for anything I can get," Athos said. He looked at the clock and groaned. "For God's sake, I've only had about twenty minutes. Do you know how long it took me to go off in the first place?"

"Not as long as it'll take you tonight if you sleep through the evening," Porthos retorted. "You've got to do this properly, you'll only make a rod for your own back otherwise."

"What the fuck would you know about it? You never had trouble sleeping in your life."

"I know if you get into bad habits now it's going to be harder to break them later. What happens when you want to go back to work, but you can only sleep in the afternoon?"

"Can I just face one problem at a time? Right now I'm so tired I feel like death, and I will take any shred of sleep that I can get." Athos rolled off the sofa and stood up. "I'm sorry if I don't meet your exacting standards of what you think I should be doing," he said bitterly. 

"I'm just trying to help," Porthos sighed, but Athos had already disappeared upstairs.

Rather than chase him right away, Porthos made them both some supper and carried it up on a tray. He found Athos propped up on the bed just staring into space and sat down next to him, passing him a bowl of pasta and a fork and making no reference to the earlier spat. 

Athos relaxed a fraction and started eating, slowly at first and then, Porthos was relieved to see, with a genuine appetite. 

"So, how’s the investigation going?" Athos ventured after a while. 

Porthos set his empty bowl on the floor and leaned back comfortably. 

"Interviewed his wife this morning. With all due respect for genuine mental health issues, the woman's a raving nutcase."

Athos stifled a laugh. "In what sense?"

"Every wall of her house is lined with murder mysteries. I got the impression she found being a suspect _exciting_." 

"Enough to have killed her own husband?"

Porthos considered, then shook his head. "Honestly, I don't think so. She didn't seem all that gutted to have lost him, and to murder someone you need a little more than vague disinterest. And while she might have been capable of throttling him I don't think she'd have been strong enough to string him up."

"It was certainly a striking effect." Athos shuddered. 

"One more thing we found out this afternoon – he'd lost his job. And I'm talking months ago. As far as we know his wife had no clue, he’d been hiding it from her, going out every morning as usual." 

"Could he have been depressed or desperate enough to commit suicide?"

"Possibly, but the post-mortem confirmed it was definitely murder. It wasn’t the bell-rope that strangled him either, it was something thinner, and we’ve not found anything to match that description at the scene."

"So you need to know where he’s been going all this time," Athos mused. "Somebody must have seen him."

"We’ll put out an appeal for information on the local news," Porthos said. "If someone’s been employing him somewhere else, hopefully they’ll speak up." He looked sideways at Athos. "Something else I was wondering – Talbot doesn’t seem to have been having anything approaching conjugal relations with his wife. It’s possible he was looking elsewhere. Locally, like."

Athos caught on and winced. "You mean you want me to ask Ninon."

"It’d be better coming from you than our lot." Porthos pursed his lips innocently. "And you did want to help?"

"That was a cheap shot." Athos sighed. "Alright, I’ll ask. Have you got any grounds for it, other than assuming her ladies were servicing every bored husband in the county?"

"There were animal hairs found on his trousers. He doesn’t seem to have owned a pet, seems to have been dead against it in fact. Ninon’s got a cat, right?"

"Two. But they wouldn’t have been in the flat, and I can’t imagine she’d have seen him in her own home. Besides, she’s stopped all that."

"Has she?" Porthos wondered. "We’ve only got her word for it. She needed the money, if I remember rightly. And you said she did admit to knowing him."

"I said he’d been into the shop, that hardly counts as an intimate acquaintance."

"Up to you. I can always send Marcheaux to have a word instead."

Athos rolled his eyes. "There’s no need for blackmail. I’ll go. But you owe me."

\--

Having now had official confirmation it was definitely murder, Porthos had been able to set up a mobile incident room in the Owlbrook Church Hall. This had the added bonus that it meant the next morning he could walk to work.

He’d decided to meet the surviving members of the St George's Parish Church Bellringing Society as a group, rather than tackling them one on one. Sometimes other people's reactions to a question could be just as telling as that of the person it was directed at, and people were also less likely to lie in front of others with the power to contradict them. 

There was of course the outside possibility that Mr Talbot had somehow so annoyed his fellow campanologists that they'd all conspired to lynch him, but Porthos considered this was unlikely.

There were eight people and a dog waiting for him in the hall when Porthos arrived, six men and two women, and they all looked impatient. He kept them waiting ten minutes longer on general principles, before collecting d’Artagnan and moving across to greet them.

"Apologies for keeping you waiting," Porthos said insincerely. "Thank you for coming."

"I wasn’t aware we’d been given a choice in the matter," said one of the men dryly. 

"And you are, sir?" Porthos asked, looking down at his list of names and making a guess. 

"Graham Ashton."

Porthos nodded. Athos had related his conversation with Aramis, including his comments on the group’s self-appointed leader. 

"Ah, yes, our keyholder," Porthos said, giving him a hard smile. "And the rest of you?" 

The others seemed less keen on identifying themselves, giving their names in uncomfortable undertones, but that was a common reaction to being faced with the police and didn’t necessarily mean anything. The only one happy to announce his presence was the dog, a dribbly pekingese that initially tried to chew on Porthos’ trouser leg, then sneezed on him.

The eldest members of the group were both retired gentlemen, Alun Peters and Terry Smith. The youngest were Tim Willard and Donna Mathers, a couple in their twenties who barely spoke, and spent most of the interview nervously clasping each other's hands. 

After Ashton, the rest of the group comprised Juliet Livingstone-Knox, Fred Canonbury and James Dickson, all upper-middle-aged, upper-middle-class, and Porthos hated them on sight. He knew this was unfair and probably discriminatory, but frankly he didn't much care. They all had an air of having been inconvenienced by this interview, and certainly displayed little grief at having lost a bell-ringing partner of some years.

"How well did you all know Mr Talbot?" Porthos asked. "Had he been a member long?"

"Several years," said Ashton, quickly establishing his position as spokesperson via the principle of not letting anyone else get a word in. "I think I'm right in saying that he joined around the same time as Mr Peters over there," said Ashton.

"That's right." Peters nodded complacently and lapsed back into silence, possibly used to Ashton doing all the talking. Porthos was starting to realise he’d have to see them separately after all, or at least get someone to helpfully gag Ashton. 

"We didn't socialise with Talbot much away from the church," explained Ashton. "There was the occasional drink in the pub after a practice session, but that was the extent of it."

"And you’d practice one evening a week and then ring for the services, is that right?"

"Yes, and in between times we’d also meet in the hall here. Some of us also rang for the churches at Mayfield and Hangate. Talbot was one."

"Not St Michael’s?"

Ashton scowled, then quickly smoothed out his expression. "There’s another established group in Crossley. Despite the fact we share a vicar, they felt that we were not – required there, shall we say?"

"And this is everyone in the Owlbrook group?" 

This innocent question lead to a rather more in-depth explanation than Porthos felt was warranted on how the church had six bells but there were ten more or less permanent members of the group to allow for flexibility on attendance and peals of long duration. 

One of the two other standing members was away on a cruise and could therefore presumably be safely excluded from the investigation, pending confirmation they were indeed in the Bahamas, and the other was the not-so dearly departed Talbot.

Getting into his stride, Ashton was now explaining that once upon a time they had rung here every Sunday, but falling congregation sizes and stretched resources meant that the vicar now only held communion here every other week. 

"Did you know Talbot had recently been made redundant?" d'Artagnan enquired, cutting through Ashton’s rambling when it looked unlikely to stop of its own accord. He’d wondered if Talbot had confided more to his bellringing friends than he had at home. But they all looked blank and in some cases disapproving, as if to have lost his job through no fault of his own somehow reflected badly on him. D’Artagnan decided the chances of Talbot having admitted it to this lot was remote.

"Where were you all the morning of Talbot's death?" he asked instead. 

"I was at Mr Canonbury's house," said Juliet Livingstone-Knox smoothly. "So was James. We were discussing a proposal for a ceremonial peal to be rung for St George's day."

"Mr Talbot wasn't involved in that?" Porthos enquired, noting that the others looked surprised by this news, and that Ashton looked almost outraged.

"No. As the longest-standing members of the group, we considered that it was up to us to come up with some concrete plans before presenting them to the vicar. And to the rest of the group, of course," she added almost as an afterthought, ignoring Ashton’s spluttering that he should have been consulted. 

"You all assembled quite early?"

"Seven thirty. We rise early in the country, Inspector. Mr Canonbury had laid on breakfast for us. We didn’t leave until eleven." Well past when the body had been found, in other words. And Talbot had been leaving home at seven thirty, to get to work – so his wife had imagined – for eight.

Tim and Donna had also been together that morning and left for work together, a fact they admitted with a certain amount of blushing. Alun was married and had been at home with his wife, and Terry was a widower and had been home alone, as had Ashton. All of which was entirely plausible, and also meant within reason any of them could have done it, Porthos realised irritably. 

The dog was snuffling wetly around his ankle again, and he resisted the urge to shove it away. ‘Policeman attacks beloved pet’ was not a headline he wanted to see in the local rag. He normally liked dogs but this one, like its owner, he found distinctly unappealing. It growled softly, as if sensing his thoughts and to Porthos’ relief Juliet finally pulled it away. 

"Well that was a waste of time," d'Artagnan sighed when they'd finally all gone. "I'm starting to think Talbot had no friends at all."

"We’re not looking for a friend," Porthos pointed out. "We’re looking for someone who was feeling distinctly unfriendly towards him, in fact. Did he have a computer I wonder? A laptop? Have we picked it up? Maybe he had more of a life online. Marcheaux, go and ask the wife," he instructed, having no desire to encounter the merry widow again if he didn't have to. 

"Elodie, the bunch that have just gone, I want you to set up interviews with them all, separately this time. Get them back in, one by one. See if their stories all stay the same when they’ve had a day or so to forget what they said. And check up on the alibis, as far as we can." 

The problem was, he mused, was that innocent people often didn’t have alibis. In fact one of the most suspicious things in his book was someone who could announce where they’d been and who with down to the second, but that also by definition made them the least likely to have been able to do something. 

He could feel a headache coming on.

\--

Porthos wasn’t the only one with a headache. Athos had not slept well, and when he had finally managed to drop off it had been restless and brief. He’d got up long before Porthos stirred so as not to disturb him and put a cheerful face on things once he’d come down to breakfast, but as soon as Porthos had gone to work Athos could feel himself somehow crumbling at the edges. 

Despite Porthos’ advice Athos went back to bed, but although he felt washed out and dizzy, sleep continued to elude him. It took him several hours to pull himself through the routine of even getting showered and dressed, and by the time he walked down to the Wiccan Well it was well into the afternoon.

Ninon frowned at him suspiciously. "Your aura’s got a very guilty sheen about it. What have you done?"

Athos sighed. "It’s more what I’m about to do. There’s no easy way to ask this. Was Stuart Talbot ever one of your clients?"

Ninon gave him a steely look. "You’re not asking me if he ordered incense, are you?"

"No. I’m not." Athos was too tired to beat about the bush or even to be apologetic. All he wanted to do was get this conversation over with as quickly as possible.

"Am I going to be the first port of call for the constabulary every time someone dies from now on?" she asked coldly.

"I’m not a policeman."

"No, but I can imagine where the question came from."

"A man’s dead Ninon. I promise I’ll never ask again after this, about anyone."

"Do you actually have any grounds for supposing he might have used our services, or is this just wild speculation?"

Athos looked uncomfortable. "Relations with his wife were non-existent, he doesn’t seem to have had a mistress that anyone knows of and you were – well, local."

"Oh, thanks."

Athos winced. "I didn’t mean it like that." To his relief he caught a glimmer of amusement in her expression, and realised she was just making him suffer rather than being actually offended.

"Did you know him?" he persisted. 

Ninon sighed. "The countryside’s not some kind of bucolic ideal any more, where everyone knows everyone else. In some ways it’s more isolating than a city."

"I meant - "

"I know what you meant. Biblically. Have you got a picture?"

Porthos had had copies made of a photograph, and Athos slid one across the counter. 

Ninon studied it carefully, then shook her head. "He used to come into the shop at one time, but no, he never came to me for that. Might’ve gone to one of the others though. I can show this to Cress and Kate if you like?" She gave him a thin smile. "If he went to Lucy, I guess we’re all out of luck."

"Sorry," said Athos, not entirely sure what he was apologising for, but feeling that he’d brought Ninon little but bad luck.

"It’s frightening, isn’t it," Ninon said quietly. "How wrong you can be about someone. The things she did – she was my friend. How could I not know she was like that?"

"Sometimes it’s circumstance that makes a person do bad things, more than any inherent badness in them," Athos said. 

"You should put that in a fortune cookie," said Ninon acidly. "She still killed someone. And nearly killed that policeman."

"And if life had worked out differently for her, maybe she wouldn’t have," Athos said. "That’s my point. There was never a big neon sign over her head saying ‘potential murderer’ that you should have somehow noticed."

"Plenty of people want to escape their circumstances," Ninon retorted. "They don’t resort to murder to do it. Why are you so sympathetic to her?"

"Because I know how easily life can lead you down a darker path than the one you were expecting," Athos said bleakly. "I know what it’s like to feel you’ve lost control. How helpless you feel. How much easier it is to go along the path of least resistance, than to fight your way out again." 

"Your medical issues and her avarice are not the same thing," Ninon said firmly, putting the photograph into her bag. "I’ll show this to the others. But after that, I’ll thank you to keep your promise and not bring any more to me."

Athos left the shop and walked slowly home. He wondered if Lucy had ever tried to hint at her problems to Ninon, and found her as oblivious as he just had. _Medical issues._ How neatly dismissive. And how utterly missing the point. 

He’d got through the first few days of his withdrawal surprisingly easily, all things considered. A bit of nausea, the expected insomnia, some understandable tetchiness, but nothing major. He’d even started to hope that he’d got away with it. And then this morning he’d woken up under the blackest, most soul-crushing cloud of his life, and barely been able to summon the will to get out of bed.

He’d said nothing to Porthos, partly not to worry him and partly because he couldn’t even begin to find words that would express how he was feeling. It wasn’t physical pain, wasn’t even what he’d have recognised as misery or depression, it was just a sheer suffocating hopelessness that went bone-deep. 

There was no point in any of it, no point in anything, and it frightened him how low he felt. He’d tried, back there, to tentatively express some of it to Ninon, but she hadn’t noticed. He knew he should have been more explicit, but his head was telling him not to be a nuisance, telling him that she wouldn’t care anyway.

\--

When Porthos got back that evening, earlier than normal due to being based in the village, Athos tried to listen while he told him about the bellringers but was only half-paying attention. The only thing he could think about, the thing his mind kept coming back to over and over again was that if he could just take one of his sedatives all this would stop. He could function properly, he could help Porthos with the case, he could even go back to work. He’d done okay on them, it hadn’t been so bad. Maybe he could pick a better time to give up. Maybe finding out who murdered Talbot on the ley would even make him feel better enough to try again immediately, but he was no use to anyone in this state. 

The main problem with this of course was that he didn’t have any, and he didn’t want to talk to Porthos about it or ask him to get some as he knew perfectly well Porthos would talk him out of it. He didn’t want to let Porthos down. But he also hated being this useless mess of good-for-nothing neuroses.

Fretting at the problem, his mind turned it over and over. They’d flushed the last of the pills, there were none lurking in the bathroom cabinet or the sponge bag in his suitcase on top of the wardrobe. He’d even checked the first aid box under the kitchen sink but that revealed nothing but unhelpfully sized plasters and an unfeasible number of safety pins.

As they returned to the sitting room after supper, Athos had a moment of revelation. When he’d been taking fractions of the pills his clumsy attempts at splitting them with a kitchen knife had occasionally resulted in firing part of a tablet across the kitchen. Most he’d tracked down and cleared up, but he was certain there were at least a couple of pieces that he’d never found. If they’d vanished under the fridge or down the side of the counter, there was a chance they were still there.

He wasn’t sure what condition they’d be in – cobwebby and greasy probably, if they were in a place that was out of reach of Trixie’s broom and cloth – was he really desperate enough to swallow them in that state?

Yes. 

Beside him, Porthos was dozing off in front of the telly. Athos waited until he was certain Porthos was asleep and carefully hauled himself off the sofa. He felt a mild pang of jealousy that Porthos should be able to fall asleep so easily whenever he wanted, then reminded himself that if he was successful, he too could be deeply asleep in short order.

The fact that his drugged slumbers had never been particularly refreshing, leaving him gluey and slow in the mornings was a distant and unheeded memory. The only thing filling his mind was the desperate need to stop feeling the way he did right now.

He closed the kitchen door behind him and found a long thin pole in the utility room, that had fallen off the venetian blind in the bathroom and never been re-attached. Perfect for poking into narrow spaces. 

Down on his knees, Athos squinted under the fridge. There were certainly indistinguishable lumps of something under there. He reached in with the pole and tried to swipe the debris out towards him, hoping that he didn’t disturb anything with too many legs. 

A few attempts, and finally something white skittered out towards him. He picked it up, brushing off dust and grit. It was a large chunk of tranquilliser, almost two-thirds of a tablet. In Athos’ current state it felt like striking gold. 

\--

Porthos was fast asleep and dreaming confusingly of sentient bells that were trying to ring people, when something woke him with a start. He wondered groggily if a door had slammed somewhere. It almost felt like he’d been poked hard in the ribs, but he was alone in the room. 

"Athos?" Porthos looked round, wondering where he’d gone and glancing at the clock. He’d only been asleep ten minutes. He considered dozing off again, but there was a strong smell of woodsmoke coming from somewhere, and he sneezed.

Fully awake now, Porthos decided he might as well see what Athos was up to and wandered out to the kitchen. Opening the door, he found Athos on his knees on the floor with his back to him.

"Athos? What are you doing?"

Athos straightened up so fast he nearly banged his head on the counter. "Hmmn? Oh, I er, I just dropped something."

"What?"

"What?" Athos echoed, wide-eyed with alarm.

"What did you drop?" Porthos frowned curiously, thinking that Athos looked uncommonly flushed and nervous. He also noticed that one of his hands was clenched into a closed fist.

"I, er - it was - um." Athos stared helplessly at him, unable to come up with a plausible lie on the spur of the moment. Porthos raised his eyebrows interrogatively, and Athos sighed, unfolding his fingers to reveal the half-tablet in his palm.

"Is that what I think it is?"

Athos nodded, shamefaced. "It shot across the room days ago when I was cutting it, I didn't bother looking for it until now."

"Are things really that bad?"

Athos nodded heavily, then watched as Porthos took the pill out of his hand, opened the back door and threw it down the garden.

"You trying to sedate the hedgehogs?" Athos asked bitterly.

"Just trying to get you to stick with the programme," Porthos said. He tried to draw Athos into his arms, but Athos pulled away. 

"Don't. Don't touch me."

"Athos?"

"No. I can't. It's too much."

"What is?"

"Everything." Athos looked at him helplessly. "Everything, is too much and I don't know how to even begin explaining it to you." He turned and ran upstairs, leaving Porthos wondering what the hell to do. If things were so bad Athos was reduced to scrabbling for fragments of pills on the kitchen floor they couldn't be allowed to continue, but to give up now seemed awful after everything Athos had already endured.

He followed Athos upstairs, and found he'd shut himself in the spare room.

"Athos?" He knocked quietly. 

"Leave me alone," came the muffled reply. Despite this Porthos immediately turned the handle, only to find that it wouldn't open.

"Is this locked?" he asked, startled. He hadn't even known it had a key.

"I'm sorry." Athos sounded wretched. "I just need some space, that's all."

"Athos - " Porthos faltered. He didn't know what to do, he didn't know how to help, and he wasn't entirely certain that Athos didn't have a stash of pills in there with him. He looked at the door, and judged that one good kick would burst it open, locked or not. Did he have reasonable grounds to do so? He recalled Aramis asking him so accusingly whether he'd really take Athos' place of refuge away from him, and closed his eyes, resting his head against the doorframe. 

"I'm here, okay?" he said finally. "If you need me. If you need anything."

"I know. I'm sorry. I just need - "

"Space. I know." Porthos took a deep breath. "I'll be downstairs, yeah? If you need me."

\--

Porthos went back downstairs feeling tired and heavy. He went back to where his work bag sat beside his chair in the kitchen, and took out an envelope. It had arrived that morning, but he hadn’t had the guts to open it yet. He’d been hoping to talk to Athos about it, maybe open it together, but Athos had clearly been distracted even before the business with the pill and Porthos had willingly taken the excuse to put it off.

Now it felt like bothering Athos with his own problems was just one more pressure the man didn’t need, and Porthos turned the envelope over in his hands. It was the copy of his birth certificate he’d ordered, and with any luck would provide the answers he was looking for.

Making up his mind, Porthos opened the envelope with hands that had become suddenly clumsy. He scanned the recorded names, and his heart sank. His father was down as Phillipe du Vallon, which he knew wasn't the case. He threw the certificate down and rubbed his face tiredly. Back to square one.

He'd still have liked to talk it over with Athos, but he was hardly in a communicative mood. Porthos left it lying on the table and turned out the light.

\--

When Porthos woke the following morning, he discovered that Athos had already got up and gone out. He got ready for work feeling somehow beaten. He wanted to help Athos but it felt like he was being constantly shut out.

He’d been at work perhaps twenty minutes when he got a text.

 _Ninon says Talbot was Cressida’s client at one point. She’ll talk, if it’s kept discreet._ A mobile number followed.

Porthos wondered if Athos had tried to call and he’d somehow missed it, but checking his phone revealed the text was all he’d received.

"Seriously? You’re not even talking to me now?" Porthos grumbled. Given they were currently based in the village there was nothing stopping Athos just dropping in with the news, but he hadn’t. Porthos debated phoning him anyway, but was interrupted by d’Artagnan coming over.

"We've got a hit sir, from the public appeal that went out on the news. Usual range of cranks phoning in, but one was the manager of the leisure centre, says he recognised Talbot as a frequent flier. Apparently he'd come in nearly every weekday evening. The weird thing is, when they were reviewing the CCTV footage to make sure it was him, they realised he never actually used any of the facilities – he'd just go into the changing rooms, have a shower and come out again, dressed in a different set of clothes."

"Nobody questioned this?"

"He had an annual membership, so there was nothing stopping him. Like I said, nobody even noticed until they started looking. We're getting a file sent over, so we can see what he was up to."

When the footage arrived, they all clustered round d'Artagnan's computer screen to watch it. Sure enough, the late Mr Talbot appeared on cue, walking into the main reception.

"What's he wearing?" Porthos asked. "Looks like some sort of boiler suit."

Talbot disappeared off screen, and d'Artagnan fast-forwarded to the next timestamp where the manager had noted him reappear. It took them a second to spot him, as he had indeed changed clothes and was now sporting a smart business suit.

"What the hell's he up to?" Marcheaux frowned. "Why would you put on a suit just to drive home and presumably take it straight off again?"

"He hadn't told his wife he'd lost his job remember," Porthos said. "He's been pretending all this time he'd been going to the bank every day. But this looks like he at least _had_ another job. Manual, by the looks of things. A garage, maybe? Perhaps he was getting all hot and bothered, and needed to freshen up before changing back into his business suit. Can we go back to the first shot?"

D'Artagnan reset the footage and paused it on Talbot entering the reception again. They all peered at his overalls. There was a blurry logo on his chest, but they couldn’t make it out.

"Can we blow this up at all?" asked Porthos. 

"We _can_ , but what you’ll get is the same four pixels, just the size of the screen that’ll still tell you fuck all," Marcheaux told him, not quite managing to keep the satisfaction out of his voice.

"Yes alright, _thank_ you," said Porthos heavily. "Has anyone got an actually helpful suggestion?"

"Talbot’s car was found in the church car park, right?" d’Artagnan asked, reaching for the evidence list.

"Yes, why?"

"If he was changing every day before going home then presumably he didn’t wanted his wife to find the overalls. Probably kept them in the car. I had a feeling – yes, here it is." He held out the clipboard for them to see that one pair of beige men’s overalls had been retrieved from the boot.

"Why has nobody mentioned these before?" Porthos demanded. There was a shifty silence, with everyone trying to avoid everyone else’s eyes. 

It was Marcheaux who finally spoke up, figuring that his stock probably couldn’t actually get any lower. "We didn’t think it was relevant. Just thought it was a manky old pair of overalls that he kept for working on his car."

"Well, you’ll know better in future, won’t you?" Porthos growled. "Somebody get the damn things brought over from Crossley."

\--

An hour later they were examining the overalls with a certain amount of distaste. They were less than clean, with something nasty encrusted onto them in several places. The logo at least was readable.

"Michaelfield Farmfresh," Porthos read. "What’s that, a supermarket or something?"

Elodie swivelled back to her keyboard and googled it. "It’s a battery egg farm sir," she reported. "Just outside Crossley."

"Is it indeed. Finally we’re getting somewhere. Right, Elodie, I want you to go and interview Cressida. You two - " he beamed unnervingly at d’Artagnan and Marcheaux. "Chickens."

"I hate being stuck with Marcheaux," d’Artagnan muttered to Elodie as they crossed paths on the way out.

"Because he’s a dick, sir?" she asked innocently.

D’Artagnan grinned. "No. Because I never get to be Bad Cop."

\--


	5. Chapter 5

"How come Elodie gets to interview the prossie and we get stuck with the chicken shit?" Marcheaux complained as they pulled into the car park of Michaelfield Farmfresh Industries, an enormous warehouse on the outskirts of Crossley that looked neither farm-like nor fresh. 

"Presumably Porthos thought she might be more likely to confide in her than us," d’Artagnan said. 

"Woman to woman you mean?" Marcheaux gave him a leery grin. "Now there’s an interview I wouldn’t mind sitting in on."

"Haven’t you got into enough trouble with sex workers lately?" d’Artagnan pointed out.

Marcheaux glowered at him. "So you’re happy with the chickenshit option are you?" He climbed out of the car and wrinkled his nose. "Urgh, it stinks."

D’Artagnan followed him out and clapped him on the shoulder. "Just be grateful the Inspector didn’t want us working it undercover."

\--

Inside, the noise of the hens was deafening and the stink was a thousand times worse. A wary looking woman in reception directed them to an office at the back, and they couldn't help noticing the looks they were getting from the workers milling between the cages.

"How many of this lot d’you reckon are here legally?" Marcheaux said in what he’d intended as an undertone, except he almost had to shout to be heard.

"That’s not why we’re here," d’Artagnan reminded him. "And if we want them to talk to us, we’ll get more out of them if we don’t make trouble."

Marcheaux’s reply was lost beneath the cackling of a thousand chickens, which was probably just as well.

"Can I help you?" The man in charge looked about twelve, although d’Artagnan assumed he must be early twenties. He had slicked-back hair, a badly knotted tie and a faint whiff of BO about him.

"You the manager?" Marcheaux demanded. "Or the work-experience boy?"

"My name’s Daniel Franks, and yes, I’m in charge here," he said importantly, then looked shifty. "Is something wrong?"

"Did you have a man called Stuart Talbot working here?" d’Artagnan asked quickly before Marcheaux could open his mouth again.

"We have a lot of people working here, as you can see."

"Don’t ask the names, eh?" Marcheaux enquired. "Suppose it’s no good asking to see your employment files?"

D’Artagnan handed over the photograph. "This is Talbot. Do you recognise him?"

Franks glanced at it, then looked more closely. "Actually, yes. He did work here. I couldn’t have told you his name, but yeah, he stuck out. Most of the workforce here’s young, and from Eastern Europe."

"Legally, I’m sure," Marcheaux muttered. Franks gave him a filthy look.

"You find me a hundred British workers willing to shovel shit for minimum wage, I’ll run a recruitment drive." He looked at the picture in his hand. "Talbot was unusual. But we were hiring and he said he needed a job, desperately like, so I took him on. He was a good worker. Quiet, diligent. But then he didn’t turn up and I’ve not heard from him since. Figured he’d found something better. What’s he done then?"

Marcheaux snorted. "Got himself murdered."

Franks finally looked shocked, and dropped some of his bravado. "Murdered? How?"

"Someone strangled him," Marcheaux declared cheerfully, just as d’Artagnan had been about to say that was need-to-know only, on the basis it might become relevant in identifying the murderer.

"Did he have any particular friends here?" d’Artagnan asked. "Anyone he was close to, anyone he might’ve confided in?"

"Or anyone who hated him," Marcheaux added. "Any tensions between him and the rest?" Thinking if Talbot had been a bell-ringing middle-Englander, he might also have been a racist old fuck who’d pissed off the immigrant labour force enough to top him. 

"I don’t think so," said Franks, shaking his head dubiously. "You can talk to Matteusz if you like. He was his shift partner. He might know more than me about who Stuart spoke to."

Matteusz looked less than thrilled about speaking to them, but relaxed a little once d’Artagnan quickly explained they were only interested in Talbot’s death and nothing else. 

"He was a very private man," Matteusz explained with a shrug. "He never says much. I know there was a wife, but – I think perhaps there also was someone else?"

"He had a mistress?" Marcheaux demanded. 

"No." Matteusz frowned. "Recently, he would talk about looking forward to meeting this person, and I think at first I have it wrong, that he is just talking about a date – but now I think no, he did mean meeting for the first time. Normally, he does not share much, but that day he was excited." Matteusz’s face fell a little. "And then he does not come back."

"Thank you. You’ve been very helpful," d’Artagnan told him. "That’s all for now."

"Helpful?" Marcheaux complained as they left. "He told us fuck all."

"He confirmed Talbot had arranged to meet someone," d’Artagnan pointed out. "Besides, did you really want to stay in there much longer? I was forgetting how to breathe."

"Enough to turn you vegetarian," Marcheaux agreed cheerfully, without meaning a word of it. "So what do we reckon, the dirty old fuck was getting his rocks off online and got himself catfished in some chatroom? Arranged to meet up in a deserted church with a bagful of the family silver and got knocked off for his trouble?"

"It sounds like it doesn’t it?" d’Artagnan mused. "Except Mrs Talbot’s not reported anything missing."

"Maybe it was her," Marcheaux suggested. "Lured him in under a false name, then did away with him."

"Or met him online anonymously and did her nut when it turned out to be him," d’Artagnan countered, suddenly taken with the idea, particularly if it avoided any further contact with the egg factory. "Hopefully any computer equipment he had’s been collected by now. Swing back via the station, and let’s see."

Marcheaux pulled into a garage for fuel on the way. "Want anything?" he offered, leaning in to grab his wallet from his jacket on the seat.

"Could you grab me a sandwich?" d’Artagnan asked hopefully, realising they’d missed lunch.

When Marcheaux came back a few minutes later he tossed d’Artagnan a packet and climbed back behind the wheel. 

"Thanks. What did you get?" 

Marcheaux gave him a shit-eating grin. "Chicken."

D’Artagnan groaned. He’d just lost his appetite.

\-- 

True to his word, Aramis had arranged a ceremony at short notice to bless, purify and generally re-sanctify the church and specifically the belltower. Talbot was technically to be buried at St Margaret’s, but Aramis had felt it appropriate to include a memorial section dedicated to the man who had after all worked here as well as died within the walls. 

Athos sat at the back and to one side, where he could observe the rest of the congregation. It was highly likely, he knew, that the murderer was here. Rather than finding this unsettling, Athos felt sharper than he had for some days, staring covertly at each person as if he could determine guilt by expression alone.

Talbot’s widow was there, sitting at the front. She looked as if she was enjoying being the centre of attention, and didn’t appear terribly grief-stricken. To Athos’ mind, if she’d done him in she’d probably have been putting on a better display of loss, but you never knew.

The bellringers were all present too, although Athos noted they weren’t all sitting together. Not as tight-knit a group as they liked to pretend, perhaps. The young couple were sitting together in one pew, two older men and a third Athos recognised as Ashton were sitting behind them, and in the next row back two men and a woman he guessed had to be Juliet Livingstone-Knox, mainly by the scruffy but expensive dog snoring at her feet.

Various other members of the great and the good from the village and surrounding area were present, including Anne Bourbon. Athos was glad she’d come to support Aramis, whether their relationship was public knowledge or not.

He couldn’t see any police officers that he recognised present, but that didn’t mean Porthos hadn’t sent one along. He’d wondered if Porthos might have come himself, but no doubt he was too busy.

As for himself, Athos was feeling a little calmer today. Wrung out, yes, after another miserable night, but clearer in his head than he’d been for a while and marginally less like he’d die if he didn’t take something. 

He was also deeply ashamed of his behaviour the night before. He’d been so utterly overcome, by cravings and by shame at what he’d been found doing, that he’d been unable to look Porthos in the eye and just hidden away from him. Sometimes, Porthos’ determined sympathy and understanding was harder to deal with than if he’d just been shouted at.

Athos had also purposely avoided him that morning, feeling the cowardly need to delay the inevitable conversation about it. When he’d returned home Porthos had left for work, apparently without breakfast. Athos had half expected him to leave a note, or perhaps call him to see how he was, but there’d been nothing. 

Despite the fact Athos had been actively avoiding him, he couldn’t help feeling a little hurt that Porthos had taken his request for space at face value quite so thoroughly. Consequently when he’d had to relay information from Ninon, he’d merely sent a terse text. When even this had garnered no reply he wondered if Porthos was angry about his near-lapse after all, and hated to think that he might have disappointed him. 

Still. He’d see him that night, and hopefully all would be well again.

While not technically a church-goer or otherwise believer, Athos found the blessing service was a comfort and when it was over, rather than exiting through the south door as normal, the congregation filed out through the bell tower to the west.

Watching faces, Athos got the impression the bellringers were rather looking down their noses at the fact everyone was walking through what was normally their space alone.

Juliet Livingstone-Knox was paying little attention to her dog as it snuffled around the feet of the departing congregation, trailing its lead. She’d obviously tied it up somewhere and it had pulled free.

Athos caught the end and drew the dog out of danger of being trampled or tripping someone. It had a brand new plastic lead, which possibly accounted for the knot having slipped.

Athos remembered Porthos saying Talbot had had animal hairs on his trousers. But the dog was a familiar enough sight, getting up in people’s laps where it could, invited or not. It didn’t mean anything. Athos looked at the new lead, and wondered what had happened to the last one. Strangled with something thinner than a bell-rope, he remembered Porthos saying. But Knox had a strong alibi, and in any case she didn’t look strong enough to have hauled Talbot’s dead weight up from the floor. 

Involuntarily, Athos looked upwards at where he’d found Talbot dangling. A wave of nausea swept over him and he hurried out into the fresh air. He’d tell Porthos his musings about the lead and the dog when he came home that evening. 

\--

While d’Artagnan and Marcheaux had been investigating the battery farm, Cressida had agreed to meet Elodie, asking if they could meet in the local café, rather than have her come to the house.

"Yes, Stuart was seeing me for a while," she agreed readily, glancing at the photograph Elodie slid across the table for confirmation.

"How long?" 

"About a year. Then about six months ago he stopped coming."

Elodie clamped her jaw together in an effort not to laugh, but Cressida caught her expression and laughed herself. 

"Stopped booking appointments, should I say," she amended. 

"Did he give a reason?"

"Not really, although I rather got the impression he'd found someone else. He never mentioned any names, but he seemed excited about something, and he was very apologetic when he explained he wouldn't be coming back. He wanted me to understand it was nothing I'd done." She smiled faintly. "A very polite man."

"You didn't mind?" The odds against Cressida bumping off former clients in a fit of pique seemed long, but Elodie was learning to leave no potential line of enquiry unexplored, however peculiar.

"Not at all." Cressida shook her head. "It wasn't as if I needed the money, and it was a purely physical service I was providing. I think that was the thing, he'd found someone to cater for his emotional needs as well."

"Not his wife?"

Cressida stifled a laugh. "I don't think so. Not from the impression I got. Not that he was ever rude about her you understand, but I got the distinct impression she wasn't interested in that side of things. I don't believe she knew about me, but I suspect she would have been relieved rather than angry, had she found out."

"You don't think she killed him then?" Elodie asked, as that was clearly what Cressida was getting at.

"I never met her, I couldn't say. She might have done it for any number of reasons. Just not that one, I don't think."

"And you have no idea who it was he might have been seeing?" Elodie prompted. Whether he'd let it slip or not, it was still a fairly small community, and gossip was rife.

"Welllll." Cressida drew the word out non-committally. 

"Anything might help," Elodie said quickly. "Off the record, like."

"Well I don't know _who_. But I did get the strangest impression that he was referring to more than one person. And as he liked certain - well, certain things, I did wonder if one of them might have been a man."

\--

"So what have we got?"

The team had reassembled back at the police station in Crossley to examine Talbot's laptop, although as it turned out there was no need for decryption as he hadn’t even had a password on it. 

His wife had handed it over without protest claiming she never used it, and no-one could quite decide if she was genuinely oblivious to her husband’s possible extra-curricular activities or whether she’d already been through it and deleted anything of interest. 

There were methods of recovering data, but it didn’t look like they were going to need them. Talbot’s email account was equally unprotected and full of quite illuminating correspondence with someone identified only as "Canterbury".

Checking the interview files confirmed nobody of this name had been either seen or mentioned to date, and it wasn’t entirely clear at first glance whether the writer was male or female. 

It was Elodie who first noticed the way the writing style differed between emails, and advanced Cressida’s theory that there was more than one person involved. The idea that they might be looking for both a man and a woman explained the differing correspondence styles but also threw up the fact that no suspect could be eliminated on the basis of the strength required to haul Talbot’s corpse aloft on their own.

There were emails going back months, and some of them made for acutely embarrassing reading. Porthos felt like they were intruding on things that should have remained private, and Marcheaux’s occasional hooting laughter grated on him uncomfortably. 

Before long they had a picture of what had happened – Talbot had met someone online who’d gradually introduced to him the possibility of a real-life liaison.

"Wife swappers!" Marcheaux had exclaimed triumphantly, making jokes about bowls of car keys and the rampant filth of the commuter villages, but in truth nothing in the emails suggested actual spouses of any kind were involved. In fact, while Porthos accepted it could all be a pack of lies, if the contents were taken at face value the only party lying was Talbot himself, who presented himself as single and available.

It was the very latest correspondence that was of the most interest. After weeks of careful negotiations Talbot had secured himself an invite to meet them. It had been scheduled for the night before his murder, but irritatingly no location was given – directions were to be sent to his mobile.

"Have we got his phone?" Porthos asked urgently. A quick check of the evidence lists suggested that no mobile had been recovered. 

"It might still all be unconnected then," d’Artagnan said with noticeable disappointment. "He met them the night before, but he was killed in the morning. And his wife says he came home in between."

"It’s the fact the phone’s missing that bothers me," Porthos said. "It conceivably held the only evidence that could identify them. Why take it if they weren’t involved? No, I still think this is it. For whatever reason, he went back to meet them the next morning, at the church." He drummed his fingers on the desk. "We know he went willingly. We just don’t know who he was meeting, or what went so wrong that he ended up dead." 

"Maybe it was a sex thing," Marcheaux suggested with a prurient enthusiasm. "Auto-erotic asphyxiation. Went tits up, Talbot ends up dead, so they string him up and hope it looks like suicide?"

"At that time of the morning? In a church? Fully dressed?" Porthos boggled at him, and Marcheaux shrugged, unabashed. 

"Could have been an initiation thing? They might’ve dressed him again after."

"There was no indication of recent sexual activity, his or anyone else’s," d’Artagnan reminded him. 

"Didn’t go with a smile on his face then?"

Porthos sighed, ignoring the sniggering and feeling they were one step forward and two steps back. Nobody in the correspondence had used their real names at any point, including Talbot. "Why Canterbury?" he mused. "People hardly ever pick a truly random pseudonym. There’s a connection there if we can only see it."

"Maybe it’s the actual Archbishop," Marcheaux grinned, then sat up. "Or that vicar! He looks the sort to be into kinky shit. It’s the cassocks, it sends ‘em peculiar. And he obviously had a key to the tower."

"He’s also got a cast iron alibi," d’Artagnan reminded him. "Two entire families can testify he was in the next town at the time of the murder."

Marcheaux subsided, going angrily red. "What do you think it means then, smartarse?"

"Canterbury Bells are a type of flower?" d’Artagnan suggested. "Bells seem to feature in this quite heavily."

"Into flowers, are you?" Marcheaux mocked, and it was d’Artagnan’s turn to go red. 

"My mother runs a garden centre as it happens."

"Oh yes? I guess she must be good at raising pansies, huh?"

"I am not a fucking pansy!" d’Artagnan snapped at him, but Marcheaux just gave him an innocent smile of concern.

"Something wrong with that is there?" he asked mildly, and with a hot prickle of embarrassment d’Artagnan remembered Porthos sitting next to him. He’d plunged head first into Marcheaux's trap.

"So we could be looking at one of the bellringers," Porthos said calmly but loudly enough to stop any further bickering between his two sergeants. "Or two of them."

"Donna and Tim?" d’Artagnan suggested dubiously. "They didn’t strike me as the sort. Or as murderers, for that matter."

"Ashton was the one with a key," Elodie suggested. "And he’s got no alibi. Although no motive either, I suppose. Unless he was Canterbury."

Porthos stood up. "I’m assuming we can do something on tracing the email accounts. In the meantime I want everyone interviewed again, individually this time, and at the station. Start with the wife, then Ashton. Somebody knows more than they’re telling, even if it’s only suspicions."

There was a certain amount of grumbling at this, given the following day was Saturday, but murder cases always took precedence over personal arrangements. 

D’Artagnan went into the corridor to make an awkward call to Constance, to put off her planned visit until Sunday. 

"If you moved down here this wouldn’t be such a problem," he added hopefully, thinking that they’d be able to see each other all the time then, regardless of his work schedule. 

"It’s not _my_ problem now," Constance retorted. "You’re the one cancelling."

"I didn’t mean - " d’Artagnan realised she’d hung up and he was talking to empty air. He slouched back into the ops room muttering darkly under his breath.

"Oi, misery, we’re going for a pint, you coming?" Marcheaux called from the far door where he, Elodie and a couple of others were about to leave.

"Oh fuck off." 

Marcheaux snorted with indignant laughter. "Charming. In that case, you can stay and set up the rest of the interviews, can’t you?" They’d all legged it before d’Artagnan could protest.

"Problems?"

D’Artagnan jumped, not having realised Porthos was still in the office.

"No sir. Just had to stand Constance up again that’s all. She’s not best pleased."

"Sorry for screwing up your weekend. This job’s a bastard for hammering relationships. Why don’t you go and join them for a drink, I’ll finish up here."

D’Artagnan hesitated. "What about you sir? Don’t you need to get back too?" Porthos hadn’t said anything at work about Athos’ current withdrawal process, but d’Artagnan had sensed there was clearly something going on.

Porthos shook his head. "It’s fine. You go." He watched d’Artagnan leave, squashing vague feelings of guilt. D’Artagnan was right, he should go home to Athos, see how he was. But the memory of the previous evening was still lying heavily in his stomach and right now he had a legitimate excuse to put off walking into another confrontation. He went back into his office, and picked up the phone.

\--

An hour later Porthos had sorted most of the arrangements for the next day and left details of who was interviewing whom for his team to pick up in the morning. Having run out of ways to prevaricate he grabbed his jacket and was on his way out of the building when someone hailed him from behind.

"Inspector du Vallon?"

He turned to see Constable Chakrabarti standing behind him in the corridor, grinning.

"Sanjit!" He beamed, reaching out to shake his hand. "How the devil are you? What are you doing back in this neck of the woods? Where's Pepper?"

"Oh, she's fine, she's at home. I'm just down for a course. Quite why they decided it was a better use of time for everyone to travel down here than hold it in London I have no idea, but here I am."

"How's the head?" Sanjit had been injured in the course of duty the previous month, and the last Porthos had heard he'd been signed off for several weeks.

"No lasting damage, thankfully. I'm back on phased-return. Which means I get to catch up on all the exciting professional development courses I've been avoiding."

Porthos laughed. "I don't envy you. I swear they design those conference chairs to cut your circulation off after the first half hour."

"Don't suppose you've got time for a drink? They've just cancelled my train, and it's an hour till the next one."

"Uh, yeah, I reckon I've got time for a quick one." Porthos looked at his watch. He often stayed late, Athos wouldn't be worrying yet. Besides, if Athos was in a place where he didn't want any human contact, there was no point in rushing back, was there. 

They went to a pub a couple of streets away from the station; it was one of Porthos’ favourites and more importantly not the one the others would have gone to. Porthos wasn’t sure why, but somehow he didn’t want to run into them.

\--

"Oh, shit." Sanjit looked up at the clock over the bar and winced. 

"What?" Porthos followed his gaze, and laughed. "Have you just missed the next train as well?"

"Yep." Sanjit gave him a rueful smile. They'd been getting on like a house on fire, and the time had flown past. Despite their difference in rank, they were unlikely to encounter each other during day to day operations, and were quite at ease in each other's company. "Fancy another?"

Porthos wavered. The alternative was going back to find Athos in a funk, getting his own dinner and then like as not sleeping alone. It wasn't an appealing prospect, and while he had the utmost sympathy for what Athos was going through, he'd had little fun for what felt like a very long time. Athos could hardly begrudge him. 

Despite this internal reasoning, somehow the text he sent Athos said he was working late.

Time passed, the drink flowed, and suddenly it was closing time and Porthos was feeling very drunk indeed as he stood up. He'd intended to stick to coke after the first one, but Sanjit had been both persuasive and tempting, and he'd ended up drinking several pints.

They staggered up the road towards the train station, leaning on each other for support. 

"Sorry," Sanjit smiled, steadying himself on the barrier and hunting for his ticket. "I've ballsed up your evening. I hope you didn't have plans."

"Not at all." Porthos was leaning next to him, feeling euphoric from the alcohol and the release of tension. "It's been just what I needed, actually."

"Will you get a taxi back?"

Porthos pictured himself stumbling out of a taxi in this condition, having told Athos he was working and winced. "Nah, I've got a flat here in Crossley. I can walk it."

"Oh, right. I see." Sanjit was making no move to disappear through the ticket barrier, and gave Porthos an assessing look. "So - if, say, I missed this next train - I could stay with you?"

The offer he was making was plain, and Porthos felt his dick give a treacherous twitch in his pants. He swallowed, trying to pull himself together.

"I'm, uh. I'm seeing someone." His throat felt dry, despite the amount he'd drunk.

Sanjit didn't appear deterred by this news, and a moment later Porthos felt a warm hand come to rest on his. Sanjit looked up at him and slowly moistened his lips. "He doesn’t have to know."

\--


	6. Chapter 6

On Saturday morning Porthos made a token appearance at the office, then decamped to a nearby café in an attempt to combat his raging hangover with a fried breakfast. While he had every confidence in his team’s ability to conduct the interviews without him, he was also curious to see what new evidence might come to light, now that they knew about Talbot’s online activity.

The fact that this also meant he could put off the moment when he had to explain to Athos why he hadn’t come home last night was a guilty weight in the back of his mind.

During the course of the morning he sat in on several of the interviews, taking little active part but listening intently. Various new pieces of information did indeed come to light, but he wasn’t sure which, if any, were relevant to the murder. 

Talbot had recently re-mortgaged his house, a fact of which his wife claimed to have been unaware until his death. Ashton was gay. Livingstone-Knox was twice-divorced. Donna Mathers was an active member of Greenpeace. Talbot had indeed had a comprehensive life-insurance policy.

By lunchtime the prevailing theory was that Vanessa Talbot had discovered her husband had been spending the value of her house on prostitutes and murdered him for the insurance money, but it still didn’t sit right with Porthos.

More confused than ever and having exhausted his means of procrastination, Porthos finally made his way back to Owlbrook. He wondered what kind of state he was likely to find Athos in. He’d realised with a feeling of belated shock that he hadn’t actually seen or spoken to him at all the previous day, and while he’d thumbed out a late-night drunken text to say he’d be staying at the flat, he’d never received a reply. 

To his surprise and relief, he found Athos in the kitchen, up and dressed and lucid. Porthos felt a strange sense of pride that he was more resilient than Porthos had given him credit for, mingled with guilt that despite assuming otherwise, he still hadn’t come home to check on him.

"Hello." Athos gave him a smile that made Porthos feel worse than ever, because it contained enough apology to suggest Athos believed he’d been the reason Porthos had stayed away. "How’s the case going? Did you get everything done you needed to?"

Porthos sank into a kitchen chair, knowing he had to make a clean breast of things. 

"I’ve got a confession to make. I wasn’t working last night. I went for a drink."

"Who with?" Athos asked in surprise.

"Sanjit."

Athos paused. "The dog man."

"Yeah. He was in town for a thing, and we – went to the pub, after."

Athos gave him a puzzled look. "Why didn’t you just tell me? I wouldn’t have minded?"

"I dunno. I suppose I didn’t want you to think I was out living it up while you were stuck here feeling rotten," Porthos said awkwardly. "I meant to come home, but I ended up drinking too much to drive, so – yeah. I ended up back at the flat."

There was a longer pause, while Athos weighed Porthos’ seemingly innocuous words against the fact he wouldn’t look at him, and the expression on his face. 

"Did he stay the night?" he asked carefully. 

"No! Athos, no, it wasn’t like that," Porthos blurted, finally looking up in horror. "I put him on the last train back to London, I swear."

"He sounded nice," said Athos, going distant and turning away. "You’d probably be better off with him."

Porthos surged to his feet, almost knocking the chair over. "Don’t. Don’t do that. I’m telling you, it was nothing."

"Then why did you feel the need to lie about it?" Athos asked quietly. "And why do you look so guilty?"

Porthos swallowed. He’d never been a good liar, and now he was realising by trying to hide his own guilty feelings about abandoning Athos he’d made it look worse than it was. 

"Look, alright, yeah, fine. I admit it. I was tempted," he confessed. Athos went from looking bleakly at the kitchen floor to staring fixedly at him, holding himself so still he might have been carved out of marble. "But nothing happened, I promise," Porthos continued, willing Athos to hear the truth in his words. 

He edged closer, sliding his arms around Athos’ waist. "I love you Athos. I don’t want anybody else. Nothing happened, I swear. I was an idiot, and for a second I was nearly much worse. But I slept alone last night, and that’s the God’s honest truth."

Athos finally let himself breathe again, feeling lightheaded and rather sick as Porthos folded him into his arms. They held each other tightly for a long time, until the desperation seeped slowly out of the embrace and it began to feel comfortable again.

"I think you’d better take me to bed," Athos murmured after a while.

"You don’t have anything to prove," Porthos said, worried that Athos now felt he had to keep him happy or risk losing him.

"Maybe not," said Athos dryly. "But you do."

Porthos blinked, then threw back his head and laughed.

By the time they made it to the bedroom they were both already half-undressed, and the rest of their clothes followed in short order. While they’d never been slouches when it came to lovemaking it had been a while since it had felt this needy, as they claimed and reclaimed each other with a hundred burning looks, touches and kisses. 

Finally Porthos spread Athos beneath him on the bed and fucked him long and hard until they were left sprawled across each other in a panting heap, aching, sticky, and sated.

It was a while before they untangled themselves, groaning slightly as they cleaned up before crawling back beneath the covers into each other’s arms. 

"Are we okay?" Porthos whispered. After confessing how close he’d come to straying, he wouldn’t have blamed Athos for being angry, or upset, or merely sulky, but he seemed to have taken it remarkably well, considering. 

Athos, for his part, felt rather like a drowning man who’d skirted a whirlpool only to be thrown up onto unexpectedly solid ground. To be told in one breath that he’d almost unknowingly lost his lover, only for Porthos to still have chosen him even in his current sorry state, felt almost too much to take in. But if he understood anything, it was temptation. 

Athos stirred, looking up at him. "Of course. Aren’t we?"

"Yes." 

Porthos kissed him, and Athos nestled sleepily closer. "I’m sorry I’ve been so up and down lately."

"You’ve got nothing to be sorry for," Porthos said. "I’m sorry I’ve not been dealing with it so well."

"You’re doing fine," Athos promised, and for a while they dozed, not quite asleep but not wanting to get up again despite the fact it was still broad daylight. They’d both slept badly, the night before.

"I’ve been thinking," Porthos said eventually.

"Better not have been about a threesome."

Derailed from his train of thought, Porthos sat up. "A threesome," he echoed.

Athos sat up as well, more slowly. "For the record, I _was_ joking."

"What – no you muffin," Porthos laughed. "Not that. It’s just - three of my bellringers – they’re providing each other’s alibi."

"Is that surprising? I thought you said they all were, more or less."

"We re-interviewed them all this morning. Separately, and simultaneously. D’Artagnan took Canonbury, Marcheaux took Dickson and Elodie and I took Juliet Livingstone-Knox." Porthos snorted at the ridiculousness of the name, and Athos hid a smile.

"They all agreed exactly where they were, and at what time, and what they were doing," said Porthos. "And I mean exactly."

"It felt rehearsed?"

"Yeah. There’s normally at least a bit of float, some sort of disagreement, certainly when you get people apart, and a few days have passed since the event. But it felt off, too perfect, you know? But three of them – I thought it took them out of it. I thought from what Cressida said, and from the fact it would have taken a bit of strength to haul Talbot up on that rope that we were looking for a man – or maybe from the emails, a man and a woman in it together."

He’d considered Tim and Donna for precisely this reason, but their acutely embarrassed reaction to the suggestion they might’ve been involved in some kind of open sex ring had convinced him they were innocent of that part at least. And he couldn’t see any other motive where they were concerned. Despite her environmental leanings, he didn’t see Donna murdering someone over working at a battery farm.

Alun he was satisfied was out of it, having now interviewed his wife as well. Terry Smith and Graham Ashton still had no alibi and had remained on the list of suspects, although the elderly Smith was arguably excluded on grounds of strength. 

"Ashton’s a possibility,” said Porthos. “He finally admitted in the interview this morning that he’s gay."

"Admitted?" Athos echoed mildly. "Something to be confessed now, is it?"

"I didn’t mean it like that," Porthos objected. "You can’t imagine I did."

"But the fact of it immediately makes him more of a suspect in your eyes?"

There were times when Porthos occasionally forgot Athos was once a top defence lawyer. There were others when he was forcibly reminded of it.

"Can we stop with the cross-examination?" he objected.

Athos smiled. "Just making sure your case is tight. Circumstantial evidence tends to blow away in the slightest breeze."

Porthos shook his head. "We’re looking for a man with a plausible sexual interest in Talbot, and Ashton has no alibi and a key to the tower where he was found." 

"Motive?" Athos asked mildly. “If you’re taking plausible interest to mean men in general rather than Talbot specifically, I fit those criteria as well remember.”

"He had the ability and the opportunity," Porthos pointed out, ignoring this on principle. "The motive’s the part I don’t get, with any of them. I don’t like Marcheaux's idea of a sex game gone wrong, it doesn’t feel right. If he’d been killed earlier and just dumped there then maybe, but time of death puts it right before he was strung up. Who has sex in a church first thing on a Tuesday morning? And for that matter why pick the church anyway for a clandestine meeting? What if they’d run into the vicar?"

"If it was one of the bell ringers they’d likely be familiar with Aramis’ timetable. Know they’d have the place to themselves. You really think it was Ashton?"

"Honestly, no," Porthos admitted. "He strikes me as too self-important to murder somebody. He’d just badger them to death. Instinct says it’s one of the others, but their alibis all seemed too tight – until you started talking about threesomes, anyway. I’d accepted the fact we might be looking for two murderers. I hadn’t considered there might be three."

"You think they’re shagging each other? Canonbury, Dickson and Knox?"

"It’s a possibility I hadn’t considered until now."

"Ugly old posh people have sex too," Athos told him with a laugh. "Does this comes as a shock?"

Porthos made a face at him and lay down again, turning it over in his head.

"So what were you thinking about, before I side-tracked you?" Athos asked after a moment. "You were about to tell me something."

"It’s just an idea," Porthos said slowly. "I don’t want you to think I’m forcing it on you. But I was thinking about giving up the Crossley flat. I mean, I spend most of my time here anyway. Last night was the first night I’ve spent there in weeks. And look how well that went," he added gloomily. "There’s no point in spending money on renting a flat I’m never in. But I don’t want to make you feel like I’m invading your space. Maybe I should think about getting a flat here in Owlbrook instead, that might make more sense. I don’t think Ninon’s let hers yet."

Athos had been about to say something, but was abruptly distracted by this suggestion. "Do you really want to live in an ex-brothel?" he asked with some amusement.

"Well, no, not really," Porthos admitted.

"Stay here," Athos said, firmly. "Move in. I think it’s a great idea."

"You do?"

"Absolutely. Like you say, you practically live here already anyway."

"My flat came furnished, so I’ve not really got any furniture to bring,” Porthos said reassuringly. “Just my stuff."

"We’ll make room for whatever you need," Athos promised, then had a thought. "Is this house okay for you? Would you prefer something with more room? We could move, get somewhere together?"

Porthos shook his head. "Nah. I love it here. It’s very you."

"Is it?" Athos looked surprised, and Porthos nodded. "I think I’ve changed. The man I used to be – I don’t think he’d recognise me if he met me now," Athos mused.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"Maybe not," Athos conceded, and wound his arms around Porthos’ neck. "I love you," he whispered.

Porthos kissed him gently. "I love you too. And all I want is to stay right here with you, but - "

"I know. You’ve got murderers to catch." Athos smiled. "Go." 

\--

One hasty shower later, Porthos was back in Crossley just as the confused looking churchwarden was being shown out of the building by Elodie. Alfie Bishop, subject of endless parish jokes to the effect that he outranked the vicar, was a rather unworldly soul of seventy five that nobody had ever seriously considered as either a contender for the crime or the identity of Canterbury, but as one of the only keyholders he had to be duly eliminated.

"Everyone here?" Porthos looked around the CID suite and frowned. "Where’s Marcheaux?" Suspecting he’d bunked off early in resentment at having to work Saturday.

"He’s gone to interview the bloke who runs that key-cutting place the Reverend mentioned," d’Artagnan told him. "We’d left messages, but he’s only just got back to us, turns out he’s been away for a couple of days. No luck at any of the others, so Marcheaux’s gone over to show him some pictures."

"Alright, well let’s hope it turns up something concrete. I’ve got a theory, but right now I don’t have any proof."

"Who do you like for it sir?" d’Artagnan asked. 

"Three of ‘em. Knox, Canonbury and Dickson. I reckon they’re in it together."

"I thought we were looking for a possible sexual motive?"

"We are."

D’Artagnan blinked. "Oh. Right. All of them?" he added, at a slightly incredulous pitch.

Porthos nodded grimly. "As far as we could tell, Talbot didn’t know who he was talking to. What if they didn’t either? We’ve been assuming he was somehow targeted, but what if him walking in came as a horrible shock all round?"

D’Artagnan and Elodie stared at him. "You mean they killed him to keep him quiet?" d’Artagnan said slowly. "To stop him spreading it round the village they were having it away?"

"Or to stop him telling Ashton," Elodie guessed. "He didn’t strike me as the kind to suffer any funny business in what he saw as his group. He’d likely have thrown them all out."

In the sudden loud exchange of ideas, nobody noticed Marcheaux come in until he deliberately dropped his bag heavily on the desk and made them all jump.

"I assume you’ve got some good news for us?" Porthos asked, taking in his smug expression.

"I might just at that. Bloke recognised one of the pictures. You’ll never guess who."

"I can guess within three," Porthos told him. "Dickson, Knox or Canonbury."

Marcheaux’s smile slid into a scowl at having his thunder stolen. "Dickson," he said sulkily. "How’d you know?"

"Threesomes," said Porthos cryptically. 

Marcheaux made a face. "I’ve changed my mind sir, I don’t wanna know after all."

\--

A couple of strategic phonecalls revealed that their suspects were currently all conveniently gathered at Canonbury’s place just outside Owlbrook. Porthos took d’Artagnan, Marcheaux and a couple of uniforms with him and hurried over there, suddenly paranoid they were all planning to do a runner.

To his relief Fred Canonbury answered the door himself, and Porthos strode past him to find Knox and Dickson seated in the living room. They jumped to their feet looking startled when he burst in closely followed by his officers, and tailed by a confused and protesting Canonbury.

"Ah, you’re all here. Good."

"Is there a problem Inspector?" Juliet Livingstone-Knox asked icily. 

"I _had_ a problem,” Porthos said seriously. “Quite a knotty one. But I think I’m beginning to see the light. Let me tell you a story, if I may?" He glanced round at the room, noting the tense faces, and the fact nobody liked to stop him.

"Stuart Talbot. A man stuck with a boring marriage and a boring job."

"And a boring hobby," Marcheaux added under his breath, but quite audibly. The three all visibly bristled at this and Porthos suppressed a smile. Angry suspects were careless suspects. Marcheaux had his occasional uses.

"Rather than become resigned to his fate, Talbot had begun looking around for something more diverting. He started paying for prostitutes, and seems to have re-mortgaged his house in order to have a supply of ready cash. But then one day he lost his job. This came as something of a shock, and he took a menial job so at least enough was coming in to pay for groceries and hide the state of affairs from his wife. She would have found out eventually, one assumes. Possibly he’d have done a bunk by then, we don’t know. All this certainly lead us on something of a wild chicken chase, but in the end seems to have had nothing directly to do with his death.” 

Porthos paused and looked round the room. The initial tension had ebbed slightly as he rambled on about seemingly unconnected events and he smiled inwardly. Time to slide the knife in. 

“What we do know was that paying for sex wasn’t doing it for him any more. He’d met someone online who offered him involvement in something more appealing. But he had to appear affluent, and available. He was neither of those things, and I suggest that when he met the people he’d been corresponding with, he found to his shock not only that they knew him, but that they knew he wasn’t what he’d been claiming to be. Am I close?"

"Whyever do you imagine that we’d know?" Juliet asked scathingly. But Porthos noted that behind her Fred Canonbury had sunk shakily into a chair and James Dickson had poured and downed a stiff drink, despite the fact it wasn’t his house.

"See, at first I thought there were two people in this. A man and a woman. Then it occurred to me – these people were suggesting a threesome. Why shouldn’t they already be involved in one?"

"I don’t like your tone, Inspector, or what you appear to be insinuating," Juliet said. "Should we be requesting a lawyer to be present while you make these allegations?"

"I think that would be a very good idea," Porthos agreed. "Permit me to make a phonecall on your behalf."

He took out his phone and dialled a number while everyone looked at him in varying degrees of bemusement, including his own staff. Porthos mentally crossed his fingers. This was an extremely long shot, but - 

After a short pause, a muffled ringing could be heard coming from the direction of the sideboard. Porthos followed the noise and pulled open a drawer. A phone lay inside, and when he cancelled his own call, it fell silent.

"Whose phone is this?" he asked.

"Well it's - it's mine," Canonbury blurted. "It's my spare."

"That's interesting. Because it was Talbot's number I was calling," said Porthos evenly.

"Oh God." Fred Canonbury collapsed into a chair, his face in his hands. 

"Shut up Fred," Juliet snapped. 

"The jig’s up Jules. Face it we’re sunk." Fred looked up at them bleakly. "And frankly, I’m glad. I’ve not slept a wink since it happened. It’s a weight off."

"Shut up!" Juliet ordered, in a rising panic, but the damage was done. She turned back to Porthos with a defiant glare.

“You can prove nothing.”

“We have Mr Dickson placed making a copy of the church key. We have Mr Talbot’s phone, with, I’m guessing, directions sent him by one of you. We have your dog’s hair on Talbot’s clothes, and a warrant to search your residence, Ms Knox, for a dog leash we are interested in, in connection with the murder.”

This wasn’t entirely true – they had no way of proving what key Dickson had been copying and as for the lead Athos had only suggested it to Porthos a couple of hours previously – but he sensed Canonbury at least was on the verge of cracking, and making things seem more water-tight than they were might just be the nudge they needed.

Juliet Livingstone-Knox held his gaze stonily for several seconds, then cracked. “Fine.” She seemed to sag a little, and threw herself into a nearby armchair. “We told you get rid of that damn phone,” she said to Canonbury, who was looking sicker by the minute. He gave her an apologetic shrug, and she turned her back on him.

"What I don’t really get is why you killed him," Porthos said curiously. "You’d invited him to join you, he was apparently up for it – what went wrong?"

Juliet sighed impatiently. "It was all anonymous. You were right, we had no idea it was Stuart, until the moment he walked in. It wasn’t like the man had ever given any indication he was into that sort of thing."

"But surely it wasn’t worth killing over?" Porthos persisted. "A bit awkward maybe, but – well, ultimately you weren’t doing anything wrong, were you?"

She snorted. "In the eyes of the law, no. In the eyes of the village, our friends, our employers – how well do you think it would have gone down, truthfully?"

"He threatened to expose you?" Porthos nodded, feeling he’d guessed right.

"He threatened to _blackmail_ us," Juliet corrected incredulously. "Us! Said if we didn’t all pay him a ridiculous amount of money he’d tell everyone what we were doing. Worse than that, he’d release the contents of the emails we’d sent him. We’d have been ruined, all of us."

"Surely he couldn’t expose you without revealing his own part in it?"

"He didn’t care. Didn’t seem especially worried about that. Maybe the money would’ve let him do a flit. Interesting what you say about his mortgage.” She gave a hard smile. "I guess we gave him a way out of his boring life after all. Just not quite the one he was expecting."

"Could Talbot have proved it though, if he had tried to expose you? You hadn’t been using your own names, had you, it was - "

"Canterbury. As in Canterbury bells," she explained "James’ idea, very into his garden is James. It was a joke, you see. The thing we had in common, the way we’d met. The bells."

"I don’t think he’ll be seeing his garden for a while," said Porthos dryly. "I don’t think any of you will."

"It was all her idea," Dickson burst out suddenly. "She made us do it. Bullied us into it. I always thought it was a bad idea, but oh no, Jules insisted it was the only way we could be safe."

Juliet looked at him with cold scorn. "And yet, it was you who actually throttled him," she said damningly. "You looked like you were quite enjoying it, to me."

Suddenly, Dickson exploded into movement. He hurled his whisky glass at Porthos, who ducked just in time but was showered in glass as it hit the wall. Before anyone could react he was out of the door.

Caught by surprise, the dilemma of securing the two prisoners they already had against the potential loss of the actual murderer meant they lost valuable seconds in pursuit, and by the time they got outside the sound of Dickson’s car was a fading memory on the air.

\--

Having seen the police cars zip past his window, it had occurred to Athos to go up the church tower to see if he could see what was going on. Having made his way quickly to the top it didn’t take him long to locate a big house with police cars parked out the front; a panda car plus two unmarked, one of which looked like Porthos’. 

As he watched, to his surprise a figure came running out and into a car, squealing out of the driveway at considerable speed. A few seconds later Athos saw figures piling out in pursuit. 

At the foot of the long drive the first car had turned left, not towards the closest main road but towards the village. From his vantage point on the tower Athos could tell his pursuers were too far back to see which way he’d gone, and guessed they’d assume he’d have taken the fastest route away.

He ran down the stairs at a dangerous speed, dialling Porthos as he went.

"Your man’s heading towards the village," he said before Porthos could speak, and heard muffled swearing and an order to turn around. He guessed they’d gone wrong, as the fugitive had no doubt planned.

Athos kept running. He’d had an idea. The layout of the little lanes seemed imprinted like a map in his head, and he saw the only way the car could come would be right past the church – and his cottage. Reaching the road he estimated he had maybe two minutes at best before the car passed him. If he could only somehow cause an obstruction...

\--

Hurtling down the country lanes, siren on, Porthos didn’t hear his phone go off again in his pocket. Thus it came as a complete surprise when he turned a corner to witness utter carnage. Two cars wedged together in the centre of the road in a crush of tangled metal.

D’Artagnan, who was driving, managed to fishtail to a stop inches from the wreckage and it was that moment that Porthos’ blood ran cold as he recognised the second car. Dickson’s Volvo had obviously ploughed at speed into the side of a car pulling out of a driveway. Dickson was audibly groaning and spluttering as he tried to extricate himself from the remains of a slowly deflating airbag. But the driver’s side of the second car, the black Mercedes, had been utterly crushed.

Porthos knew that car, had driven it himself many times. Athos’ car. 

He didn’t remember getting out, found himself stumbling unwillingly towards the crash. Knowing surely nobody could have survived an impact like that. Not wanting to see, but having to know.

"Porthos. Porthos. _Porthos._ "

The fact someone was urgently calling his name finally broke through the frozen fug that had become his brain and he turned slowly towards the voice, glad to have any reason to postpone the worst moment of his life.

It took him almost two full seconds to reconcile the fact that the man he dreaded to the depths of his soul seeing in the wreckage was currently standing in front of him, whole and unharmed.

"Porthos?" Athos gave him a worried look. "Are you alright?"

"You – I thought – " Porthos looked from Athos to the car and back again. "I thought you were in there." Before he knew what he was doing he’d grabbed Athos by the arms and was shaking him like a rat. "What the fuck were you thinking? I thought you were dead. I thought – oh _fuck_." 

Athos bore his frightened anger with equanimity, then put his arms around him.

"I’m sorry," he said quietly. "I didn’t mean to scare you. I tried to call, warn you what I’d done, but you didn’t answer."

There were now three cars waiting in the road, Dickson sitting looking dazed in the back of one, Knox and Canonbury staring curiously at the unfolding events from the other two. A small tailback of local traffic was already forming.

Porthos pulled out of Athos’ arms, holding on to his anger because it meant he didn’t have to remember that moment of frozen desolation. 

"Can’t you leave the business of catching criminals to the police for once?" he choked out. "We’d have caught up with him eventually. If Dickson hadn’t had an airbag he could be dead right now. And your car’s a write-off."

"Not like I was using it," Athos murmured.

Porthos tried and failed to form a coherent response and in the end just turned away and stalked back over to his car, establishing that Dickson had been A – properly cautioned and B – didn’t need an ambulance. The cars containing Knox and Canonbury had already left, turning with difficulty in the tight lane and driving back the way they’d come to take the longer route back to Crossley.

Additional police cars arrived, to make arrangements for the road to be cordoned off and the wreckage removed. 

Porthos was about to get back into his own car when he hesitated, and looked round. Athos was still standing in the gateway of the cottage, watching him quietly.

Porthos marched over, fisted a hand in the front of his shirt and delivered a bruising kiss. He strode back to his car without a word having been exchanged. Smiling faintly, Athos watched him drive away. 

\--

It was late when Porthos finally got back that night, to find Athos waiting up for him. He looked a little uncertain, as if he wasn’t sure if Porthos was still angry, and Porthos just gathered him into his arms.

"I’m sorry," Athos murmured. "I never meant to give you a fright. I acted on impulse. Have I made things complicated for you?"

Porthos shook his head and gave a slightly resigned sigh. "No. But if anyone asks, you had engine trouble, alright? It’s what I put in the report. Nobody else realised it was deliberate, and it’s easier all round if it stays that way."

"I’m sorry. I never meant to cause you to have to lie," Athos said with a wince, but Porthos just pulled him closer again.

"Forget about it. We’ve got him, and you’re okay, and nothing else matters." He gave Athos a long look that Athos couldn’t quite read. "I don’t think I realised," said Porthos after a second. "Just how much I care. How much I need you."

Athos kissed him again, softly, and Porthos deepened it. "Can we go to bed?" Porthos asked, voice low and full of emotion. “I need to – I need – ”

"Of course." Athos pressed firmly against him, close enough to feel Porthos was already aroused. "I’m yours. Take what you need."

\--

Sunday dawned bright and cold, and Porthos was back at the police station early in the morning to take follow-up statements. The three had all been formally charged, Dickson with murder and the others with conspiracy to murder and obstruction of justice. Dickson was refusing to co-operate, but Canonbury was singing like a canary and Porthos could have kissed him. 

Juliet Livingstone-Knox was mostly concerned with what would happen to Suki the pekingese, which Porthos would have had more sympathy for if it hadn’t been her accompanying lack of remorse towards what they’d done to Talbot. The dog was currently being looked after by Elodie, who hadn’t wanted to see the confused little thing surrounded by bigger dogs in a police kennel, but she’d made it clear her landlady wouldn’t let her keep it.

Porthos had considered calling Sanjit about it, but had shied away from making what would have felt like an extremely awkward phonecall, and then had another idea. 

“How would you feel about Vanessa Talbot taking her?”

Juliet looked up in surprise. “Stuart’s wife?”

“She was talking about getting a dog. And she’s got one just like Suki on her mantelpiece,” Porthos realised. 

“Would she mind? Where Suki came from, I mean? Considering – you know.”

Porthos privately thought that Vanessa might consider getting a dog in place of a husband a fairly good deal, but kept quiet. “I think she’d be happy to take her,” was all he said. “Let me find out.”

\--

Not everyone had been required to come into work that morning, and Constance had arrived accordingly at d’Artagnan’s flat in Crossley around eleven. She’d barely taken her coat off before the argument started.

"So – have you thought any more about moving in with me?" d’Artagnan asked hopefully, as he took a couple of mugs down to make tea.

Constance stared at him. "Do you mean – have I thought any more about turning down the opportunity of a lifetime at one of the country’s top five law firms? Because yes, I’ve thought about little else for the last few weeks." She’d taken Athos’ advice, and told d’Artagnan all about the offer. It had been received with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, as far as she was concerned.

"It’s not like you’d be giving up work altogether. You could find work down here? Athos did."

"Athos is already a qualified solicitor. He’s been there, he’s done it all. I want my _turn_ , can’t you see that?"

"It made him ill," d’Artagnan pointed out. “Working for that firm. I worry about you.”

"That had nothing to do with the job. Do you think I can’t do it?" she demanded.

"No, of course not. You’re amazing. I just – I suppose I thought you wanted to be together as much as I did."

"You could always move up to London," Constance pointed out. She’d promised herself she wasn’t going to hurl that particular thunderbolt, but Athos had had a point. D’Artagnan’s uncomfortable expression said it all, and she was suddenly seized by a flare of temper. 

"I thought as much. Why should it be me that makes all the sacrifices?" Before he could answer she’d grabbed her coat and bag and stalked out of the flat without looking back.

Walking to the station Constance realised that she’d just missed a train and it was also starting to rain. Today was just getting better and better. As she was weighing up the appeal of a long cold wait on the platform versus going back to d’Artagnan with her tail between her legs, a bus pulled in opposite with Owlbrook on the front. On impulse she got on it, and twenty five minutes later was banging on Athos’ front door.

She’d phoned him on the way with an indignant if shortened version of events, so he wasn’t surprised when she pushed her way in out of the rain. 

"Athos. Thank God. Save my sanity, and make me a cup of tea." Constance made for the kitchen. Athos followed, looking amused.

"It’s a tall order, but I might just be able to do both," he said. "Here. I was actually going to post this, but since you’re here you can take it." He handed Constance a slip of paper from the dresser.

"What is it?" 

"A cheque."

Constance looked properly, and her eyes widened. 

"It’ll pay for your courses, without tying you to a specific firm. You’ll be able to choose where you work, whether that’s staying with Benet and Shaw, or going somewhere else. On your own terms."

"Athos, this is a huge amount, I can’t accept this!"

"Of course you can. I shall be offended if you don’t," Athos smiled.

"Can you even afford it? You’ve got to be on a fraction of what you used to be earning."

"I’ve sold the London flat."

"What?"

"The tenants that have been living there wanted to buy it. They made me a good offer. So – I accepted." He shrugged. "It was one less thing to worry about."

Constance threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely. Athos smiled, hugging her back. 

"I’ll re-pay you," she said, voice rather muffled and suspiciously choked.

"You don’t have to. It’s a gift. Maybe of the career that I can’t have any more," Athos said seriously. "I know what lawyers are like. The world could do with someone like you out there."

"I don’t know what to say." 

"Now that’s a first." Smiling, Athos settled her in a chair and put the kettle on. "You might want to call d’Artagnan though. Before he does something rash like hand his notice in and move to London just to make a point."

Constance snorted, took her phone out anyway. 

\--

Porthos came back from work not long after Constance had gone again, heading back to Crossley for an earlier reunion than she’d anticipated, and Athos realised there was something he hadn’t yet had the chance to say to him.

"I saw your birth certificate," Athos said quietly. "I wasn't sure if you'd left it out for me, the other night? I'm sorry I wasn't around when you opened it. I guess that answer wasn't the one you were looking for."

"I suppose technically I'm no worse off than I was before," Porthos sighed. "Would've been nice to find the answer that easily though."

"I've been thinking. You were fostered here in the village, right? There might be people who remember you."

"I did wonder what Mrs Price might have been able to tell me, if only I’d known the questions to ask in time. Whether she knew anything about where I came from. But she died just before you moved here." Porthos looked sad and Athos squeezed his hand. 

"Could there be others who remember you though?" Athos ventured. "People Mrs Price might’ve talked to about you? If she knew anything to tell, of course."

"Like who?" Porthos asked, one more spark of hope managing to struggle free from the despair threatening to overwhelm him.

"Well, actually I was thinking of Ethel Palmer."

\--

They walked round there on the off-chance, and Ethel answered the door with a smile.

"Hello! It’s Athos isn’t it?" 

"Yes, hello. I hope you don’t mind me calling?"

"No, of course not. Visitors are always welcome, we don’t get many. Come in, come in. And who’s this?"

"This is Porthos, my partner. It’s him I wanted to talk to you about actually. Pick your brains, in fact. He lived here in the village for a while, as a child."

"I was fostered by Elizabeth Price," Porthos said, once they’d been settled in the living room and he’d been introduced to Violet. "I don’t know if you knew her?"

"Oh yes, I knew Elizabeth, of course." Ethel thought back, then smiled. "Do you know, I do remember you. Fancy. All grown up." She winked at Athos. "He was such a polite boy."

Athos stifled a laugh. "Shame they grow up so fast."

Porthos kicked him in the ankle, and Athos patted him on the knee placatingly. "Actually, we were wondering if Elizabeth ever talked to you about him. About where he came from, or his parents?"

Ethel considered, shaking her head regretfully. "Not that I recall, dear. I understood your parents were dead," she said to Porthos. "From London, I think she said you came, but I’m not sure whereabouts."

"Oh well, it was worth a try." Porthos managed to smile at her, swallowing his disappointment. "Sorry to have bothered you."

"It’s no trouble dear, I’m sorry I couldn’t be of any help." Ethel looked over at Violet, feeling like she’d failed them and wanting to offer something of use, however small. "You don’t remember anything about little Porthos do you?"

Violet frowned over her knitting. "There was that man used to come," she said finally. "We always wondered if he was connected to the boy."

"Of course." Ethel sat up, looking animated. "There was a man," she explained to Porthos, "who we thought used to come and visit you. Not often, maybe twice a year?"

Porthos frowned. "I don't remember getting any visitors," he said. "Not grown-up ones."

"Oh, well maybe he wasn't coming to see you after all, maybe it was just Elizabeth. But it was funny, he never came again once you'd moved on."

"What made you notice him?" Athos asked. 

"Well, we recognised him you see," said Ethel, looking unaccustomedly coy. "From where we’d worked. From the Ministry."

"The Ministry of - ?"

Ethel didn't answer, just gave him a non-committal smile, reinforcing Athos' hunch that Ethel and Violet had at least had links to the secret service, if not full-blown careers in it. 

"What was his name?" Ethel asked Violet. "It's terrible how it leaves you, as you get older. He was a young man of course, when we first knew him way back, but it was definitely him."

"Oh, I know, I've got it," said Violet, looking up suddenly. "That’s it." She smiled. "Treville. His name was Treville."

\--

With the two ladies unable to add any further detail that might help, having thanked them profusely for the lead Athos and Porthos walked back via the churchyard. On impulse, Athos suggested they climb the belltower. 

"Blimey. I can see why you like it up here," Porthos said, staring out over the countryside. Athos noted he was keeping a firm grip on the stone parapet though, and slipped an arm around his waist.

Porthos smiled at him. "How are you feeling? It’s been over a week now. I’m proud of you, you know."

"Better." Athos nodded slowly. "Clearer. Starting to think I might actually be able to do this."

"That’s good." 

"Might even think about going back to work."

Porthos raised his eyebrows. "Already?"

Athos shrugged. "The problem is going to be finding the balance. Not so much that it stresses me out, but enough to keep my mind occupied. So I’m not just sat here thinking about it all day, which’ll be the quickest route to a relapse."

"Maybe in time - " 

"It’s never going to go away," Athos said gently. "The best I can hope for is to learn to manage it. To not let it control me. And to do that I need something else to think about."

"In that case, I’ve got a job for you," Porthos said seriously.

"You have?"

"Yeah. Find this Treville bloke for me."

"Do you think he might be your father?"

"I don’t know. But I think he’s my best shot at finding answers."

"You’re on." Athos kissed him, to seal the deal. The sun was sinking in the west, and as they stood there bathed in its warm light, just for a moment the countryside all around them was lit up with gold.

\--


End file.
